Geological Society, 483 



PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 



(iEOLOG IC! A L S( )( ;i KT Y. 



February 28th, 1917.— Dr. Alfred Harker, F.R.S., President, 

 in the Chair. 



The following commuBication was read : — 



'Fourth Note on the Piltdown G-ravel, with Evidence of a 

 Second Skull of Eocoithropus dawsoiiL' Bj Arthur Smith 

 Woodward, LL.D., F.R.S., V.P.G.S. With an Appendix on the 

 Form of the Frontal Pole of an Endocranial Cast of Eoanthropus 

 dawsoni. By Prof. Grafton Elliot Smith, M.A., M.D., F.R.S. 



Excavations last summer round the margin of the gravel-pit at 

 Piltdown (Sussex) supported the conclusion that the deposit is a 

 varied shingle-bank, and that the three layers containing Palaeo- 

 lithic remains and derived. Pliocene fossils are approximately of 

 the same age. Many elongated, flints and pieces of Weaiden 

 sandstone were observed in the bottom sandy clay with their long 

 axis more or less nearl}^ vertical. No teeth or bones Avere found, 

 but one nodular flint obtained from the same layer as Eoanfhropns, 

 seems to have been vised by man as a hammer-stone. This is not 

 purposely shaped, but merely battered along faces that happened to 

 be useful when the stone was conveniently held in the hand. 



Ill the winter of 1915 the late Mr. Charles Dawson discovered 

 in a ploughed field, about a mile distant from the original spot, 

 the inner supraorbital part of a frontal bone, the middle of an 

 occipital bone, and a left lower first molar tooth, all evidently 

 human. These are rolled fragments, and the first and third may 

 be referred with certainty to Eoantliropns dawsoni ; but it is 

 doubtful whether they represent more than one individual. In 

 mineralized condition they agree with the remains of the type- 

 specimen. The piece of frontal bone exhibits the characteristic 

 texture and thickness, with only a very slight supraciliary ridge, 

 and a small development of air-sinuses. The occipital bone is 

 somewhat less thickened than that of the original specimen of 

 Eoanthropus, and bears the impression of a less unsymmetrical 

 brain. The external occipital protuberance is a little above the 

 upper limit of the cerebellum, as in Neanderthal man ; thus 

 differing from the condition both in Eoantliropus and in modern 

 ' man. The lower molar is exactly similar to the first lower molar 

 of Eoanthropus already described, but is more obliquely worn by 

 mastication. Detailed comparison shows that this tooth is human, 

 differing essentially from that of a chimpanzee in its more hy^Dso- 

 dont crown, thicker enamel, and less prominence of the neck over 

 the root. The occurrence of the same type of frontal bone with 

 the same type of lower molar in two distinct localities, adds to the 

 probability of their belonging to one and the same species. With 

 these remains were found brown flints in great abundance, and 

 one rolled portion of a loAver molar tooth of Rhinoceros in the 

 same highly-mineralized condition as the derived Pliocene teeth at 

 Piltdown. 



In an Appendix, Prof. G. Elliot Smith expresses the opinion 

 that the endocranial cast of the fragment of frontal bone presents 

 features more primitive and more ape-like than those of any other 

 known member of the human family. 



