70 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 83 



RECAPITULATION 



The Specimens. — The remains attributed to the Eoanthropus con- 

 sist of two lots, the first comprising nine fragments of a skull (joined 

 now into four pieces), a pair of nasal bones, a portion of a lower 

 jaw, and a canine ; the second, two fragments of another skull and 

 presumably a loose molar. 



Locality, dates and discoverers. — The initial remains of the first 

 group were unearthed from the ancient river gravels of the Ouse 

 river, at Piltdown, near Fletching, in the weald of Sussex, between 

 1909 (approximately) and 1913, by laborers, but discovered, with 

 additional finds, by Charles Dawson, A. Smith Woodward and 

 P. Teilhard. The second lot is believed to have been found, in 191 5, 

 among the surface rakings of a field two miles from the site of the 

 earlier discovery, by Dawson; it was not reported until 1917 by 

 Woodward, on the basis of oral information given by Dawson. 



Main circumstances of discovery. — The earlier remains " were 

 first found by workmen when digging the gravel for use on roads, 

 and among them was the human skull which they broke up and 

 threw away. One fragment was fortunately preserved and given to 

 Mr. Dawson, who recognized its importance and at once began a 

 search for the remainder of the specimen. Enough pieces were re- 

 covered to show the essential peculiarities of the skull. Part of the 

 lower jaw and the lower canine tooth were eventually found in the 

 adjacent undisturbed gravel, and some implements of human work- 

 manship and fragmentary remains of animals were also met with." * 



Associations. — With the earlier remains were found worn fossils 

 evidently washed out of Pliocene formations (mastodon, stegodon, 

 rhinoceros) ; fossils of probably early Pleistocene age (hippopotamus, 

 beaver, elk) ; and primitive stone implements, with one large crude 

 tool of a bone of an elephant. 



Significance. — The discoverers and the English anthropologists in 

 general associate the first group of finds as those of one individual, 

 the loose molar and possibly the parts of the second skull to another, 

 and all the specimens as belonging to one early form of man, the 

 Eoanthropus. 



Erom the same gravels came also waterworn " eoliths," that may 

 have been washed out from an even older formation ; and rare flints 

 with " obvious signs of human workmanship " " and representing a 

 very old type of paleolithic implements. 



* Woodward, Arthur Smith, A Guide to the Fossil Remains of Man, etc., 

 p. 9, et seq. British Museum (Nat. Hist.), London, 1915. 



* Idem. 



