1030 
any living or extinet race, except that of Zoanthropus”’, this skull 
is nevertheless of great importance, because several circumstances, men- 
tioned by Sirs along with his valuable description, go to show that the 
aboriginal Australian with Canis dingo already lived, in the smallest 
continent, by the side of now extinct Marsupialia, which are generally 
considered as Plistocene. As the said species of the true Canis genus, the 
only large Placental Mammal of Australia besides Man, has most probably 
come with the latter from Hast-Asia, the find of Talgai throws also 
some more light on the geological age of the fossil Man of Wadjak. 
But the “Talgai Man” does not at all indicate a nearer approach 
to the common ancestor of modern mankind than do the Australian 
aborigines of the present time. 
If, however, the Australians may justly be considered as the most 
“primitive”, the “lowest” type, ie. tbat of living races of Man 
resembling most closely the common stock-type, it might have been 
reasonably expected that the real predecessor of humanity would 
be found in their fossil ancestors; unless the Australian type was 
evolved already long ago and has since remained unchanged. 
On account of the unmistakable morphological resemblance, also of 
the geographical relation and the antiquity, the fossil man of Wadjak 
may certainly be considered as an ancestor of the present Australian 
racial group, a proto-Australian. The geographical relation is obvious, 
and though there are no direct data for the determination of the 
geological age, this must certainly be considerable; several indirect 
data which I have mentioned, render it probable that a rather early 
place in the Plistocene period may be assigned to our fossil Man. 
The expectation, however, to find in him a distinctly lower type 
than the Australian of the present time, has not been realised, for 
this ancestor had reached the same stage in the evolutional scale 
as the living race, at least almost. 
Striking are the many points of resemblance on the skull and 
the lower jaw of the Wadjak Man with the Australian group, especi- 
ally the aboriginal of the largest insular country. The differences 
may nearly all be attributed to more vigorous development and 
greater perfection of the type, in surroundings more favour- 
able than those in which the Australian native finds, and has found 
for a long time, a scanty subsistence. Homo wadjakensis was an 
optimate form. In the present race the type is evidently in a state 
of decadence, as also Homo neandertalensis is the less vigorous and 
less perfect descendant of Homo heidelbergensis. Judging from the 
lower jaw, also of the latter, the type was purer and in this 
sense more primitive in the older of the two forms. 
