Kansas Mmm Mm Bolletin. 



Vol. IV, No. 20. SEPTEMBER, 1908. ) ^JL^'xiv! n'oTo! 



SOUTH AMERICAN ARCHEOLOGICAL NOTES. 



By H. T. MARTIN. 



(Contribution from the Zoological Laboratory, No. 187.) 



Plates XXXVIII to XL; four text figures. 



IN the spring of 1903, while on a fossil-hunting expedition 

 in Patagonia, South America, I accidentally discovered a 

 very unique form of human skull in a canyon close to 

 camp. At the time of the find nothing could be seen of more 

 than passing interest in the bones, owing to their fragmentary 

 condition, but recently, upon mending the broken parts, I was 

 surprised at the unusual shape and contour of the skull. The 

 exact locality of the find is at the mouth of a canyon on the 

 estancia of Mr. H. S. Felton, at Killik Aike Norte, on the Rio 

 Gallegos, about half a mile below his house, and 100 yards from 

 the river bank into which the canyon empties. The place is 

 shown in the photograph on plate XXXVIII, where the small 

 cross can be seen, to the right and just beyond the camp. The 

 most plausible explanation for its presence here appears to con- 

 sider that it had been washed down from its original resting- 

 place on the adjacent high hills which occur on either side of 

 the canyon's edge for a distai^ce of two or three miles inland. 



Although very careful search was made, no other portions 

 of the skeleton could be found at this point. From the nature 

 of the surroundings, and the condition of the skull when found, 

 there does not appear to be any possibility of determining its 

 geological age, but after careful study and comparison there 

 appears not the least doubt that it represents a race of people 

 now extinct in that part of Patagonia. 



The skull when found was embedded in the silty debris and 

 wash from the hills, with its palatine surface uppermost. Only 

 a small portion of one side of the maxilla was found, which con- 



(391) 



