72 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 83 



Preservation. — The fragments are of dark red ferruginous color, 

 and markedly mineralized. They are not deformed in any way, and 

 apparently but little worn. 



Masslvencss. — Probably the most striking character of the bones 

 of the skull (exclusive of the lower jaw), is their massiveness. The 

 bones measure 8 to 12 mm. in thickness (Keith, Antiquity of Man, 

 1925, 518, 528), to 20 mm. at the internal occipital protuberance 

 (Woodward, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, 1913, p. 124). This is just 

 about twice the thickness of an average modern white skull. This 

 thickness together with the depth of the grooves of the meningeal 

 vessels and the unusual density (small spaces of the diploe) suggest 

 strongly an abnormal condition, such as is met with in some of the 

 Florida and other aboriginal skulls in America (Hrdlicka), though no 

 disease is detectable microscopically (Shattock, Proc. Inst., Med. 

 Cong., Lond., 1915). 



Age. — The skull is plainly that of an adult of somewhat advanced 

 age, " The median parietal (sagittal) suture is completely obliterated ; 

 but the lambdoid suture is open " (Woodward, Quart. Journ. Geol. 

 Soc, 1913, p. 128; Keith, Antiquity of Man, 1927, 545). Under 

 normal present conditions, excluding a premature closure of the sagit- 

 tal suture, the age of an individual with a complete obliteration of this 

 suture could be estimated at 50 years and might be well over that. 

 But there are exceptions {e.g., in the Eskimo), particularly if the 

 skull was not fully normal, as seems here to be indicated by the thick- 

 ness of the bones ; so that all that it is safe to say is that the skull 

 belonged to an adult of probably over 30 years of age. 



Sex. — The sum of the indications, it is generally recognized, are 

 that the skull is that of a female. 



Form. — The fragments of the skull (pi. 13), aside from their 

 thickness, relative density of the cancellous bone, and a strong mark 

 of attachment of the temporal muscle, offer but little that is extraor- 

 dinary. The temporal fragment shows a moderate-sized mastoid, 

 and a small but very distinct styloid. 



The several reconstructions of the skull differ in certain respects. 

 All these, however, show it to have been rather above medium in 

 breadth (not far from the lower limits of brachycephaly). The 

 height in the Smith Woodward original reconstruction is somewhat 

 low, in those of Keith and Elliot Smith al^out or near the modern 

 medium. 



In the opinion of Dr. Woodward (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, 191 3, 

 127), a detailed examination of the bones of the skull, as far as pre- 

 served, " proves the typically human character of nearly all the features 



