FACTS AND THEORIES RELATING TO THE ANCESTRY OF 



MAN! 



Bij W. D. Matthew 



THE literature bearing upon the ancestry of man has been enriched 

 by a number of valuable contributions during the past year. A 

 memoir of Dr. ]\Iax Schlosser upon the early Tertiary fauna of the 

 Fayum flistrict in Egypt, contains descriptions of three new genera which 

 the author refers to the higher Primates (Anthropoidea), one of which 

 {PropliopHhccus) he regards as ancestral to the higher apes and man. The 

 oldest anthropoid Primates heretofore known are from the Miocene or later 

 Tertiary. Dr. Schlosser's discoveries are from the Lower Oligocene or 

 perhaps Upper Eocene. [There is a great collection of fossils from the 

 Fayum in this Museum including several specimens supposed to be Primates 

 but not yet carefully studied.] 



The remarkable human skull of Chapelle-aux-Saints in France has been 

 fully described and illustrated by Professor Marcellin Boule of the Paris 

 Museum, who regards it as pertaining to the same type as the " Heidelberg 

 man," a lower jaw found at the base of the Pleistocene formation at Mauer 

 near Heidelberg, and representing a clearly distinct anfl primitive species 

 of the genus Homo. A cast of the Heidelberg jaw is on exhibition in the 

 Primate case in the fossil mannnal hall, and Dr. Boule has promised Presi- 

 dent Osborn a cast of the Chapelle-aux-Saints skull. 



A very important paper was read by Dr. G. Elliot Smith before the 1912 

 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and has 

 attracted considerable newspaper attention since. Dr. Smith regards the 

 pen-tailed tree shrew (Tupaia) as a living representati\e of the more primi- 

 tive mannnals from which the lemurs, monkeys, apes and in turn man have 

 successively e\olved. The eviflence upon which this important conclusion 

 is ba.sed is due partly to the author's own studies, partly to researches by 

 Leche and Carllson of Stockholm and W. K. Gregory of this Museum. The 

 Primates Iuiac hitherto formed a group apart from other mannnalian orders, 



' Dr. Matthew's article is of significance for tlie mombi>rs of tlie American Museum in 

 that it gatliers together some of tlie year's new sources of information on the question of the 

 antiquity of man at a time just previous to an important series of lectures on that subject 

 announced liy the trustees. These lectures will occur in the Museum auditorium on Wednes- 

 day evenings from November '20 to December IS inclusive. The opening lecture by Presi- 

 dent Henry Fairfield Osborn of the American Museum will be a consideration of the most 

 ancient types of man. This will be followed in other lectures by evidences of the antiquity 

 of man from Old AVorld culture by Professor George CJrant MacCurdy of Yale; New 

 World physical and cultural evidences by Professor Livingston Farrand of Columbia; and 

 the proofs as set forth in North American archivology by Professor NelsC. Nelson, formerly 

 of the University of California and at present of the staff of the American Museum. — Editor. 



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