256 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 83 



With the excellent and well-illustrated reports of Professor Boule, 

 with a good plaster model of the skull, and with the writer's observa- 

 tions on the originals, it is possible to give the following notes on 

 these specimens. The illustrations are all after Boule. 



THE SKULL 



The La Chapelle skull, notwithstanding its many peculiarities, is 

 plainly a normal specimen, not affected (except in the dental arches) 

 by any disease or by any premature closure of sutures (pis. 65. 66), 

 and with but moderate injuries. The skull, except for the sexual 

 differences, comes close in many respects to that of Gibraltar. It is 

 also closely related to that of Neanderthal ; but, except for the vault 

 of No. I, it is distinctly more primitive than the Spy crania, par- 

 ticularly in its facial portions and the lower jaw. The characteristics 

 that strike one most forcibly at first sight about the La Chapelle 

 specimen are the lowness and the large size, especially in length, 

 of the vault ; the huge supraorbital arch ; primitive features of the 

 face; and a large and primitive lower jaw. More in detail the skull 

 presents the following features : 



The vault. — The vault is of the same type as that of the Neander- 

 thal skull, being only somewhat longer and more spacious. There are 

 the same heavy semilunar supraorbital welts or arches meeting in a 

 shallow depression at the glabella, which is carried far forward. The 

 arches are about as heavy and thick as in the Neanderthal, and show 

 but a very slight tendency towards diminution in thickness from the 

 middle of the upper orbital borders outward. In the median line 

 the arches descend united down the stout nasal process of the frontal. 

 Above the supraorbital arches there is much the same depression as in 

 the Neanderthal skull ; but the forehead of the La Chapelle skull, 

 while about equally as broad as that in the Neanderthal, shows slightly 

 greater height and fullness. The sagittal region is quite smooth and 

 oval from side to side. The parietal eminences are situated low from 

 above downward and far back as in the Neanderthal and the Spy 

 No. I. The occiput, somewhat more protruding on the right, is typi- 

 cally Neanderthal — broad from side to side and flattened both above 

 and below. Its protrusion is rather marked when the skull is viewed 

 from the side. There is a strong superior nuchal torus, but it does not 

 extend downward and forward. 



The outline of the vault when viewed from above is a prolonged 

 ovoid, mildly asymmetric in its posterior portion, due to the slightly 

 greater size and potrusion backwards of the right side. The temporal 

 squamae are low, the temporal fossae large, the zygomae very stout. 



