﻿NO. 7 SMITHSONIAN EXPLORATIONS, I926 169 



America also human bones and artifacts have been found associated 

 with the remains of extinct animals of the Pleistocene Age. But 

 usually either the associations or the circumstances of discovery have 

 been of such a nature that doubt has been cast on the contemporaneity 

 of deposition of objects found in the same stratum, it being assumed 

 that the human remains and artifacts belonged to intrusion through 

 later burials or other accident. 



While the general problems relating to the first appearances and 

 early development of man in America belong more properly to the 

 ethnologist, this phase of it comes definitely within the province of 

 mammalian paleontology and geology. Thus, members of these 

 sciences from time to time have taken an active part in investigation 

 of the evidences of early man in America. Perhaps the work in this 

 line that has aroused most interest in recent years is that carried 

 on by Dr. E. H. Sellards at A'ero Beach, Florida. This work, which 

 followed the digging of a l)ig drainage canal at that place, resulted 

 in the discovery of human remains and artifacts associated with fossil 

 l)ones of a Pleistocene fauna. Although careful observation was made 

 by Dr. Sellards and evidence was produced to show that the associa- 

 tion was normal, this evidence was not accepted by some of the 

 leading anthropologists as conclusive. After much discussion interest 

 in this di.scoverv lagged for a time, but was revived again a few 

 years later by the discovery at Melbourne, about 30 miles north of 

 Vero, of associated fossil bones and human remains in similar de- 

 jiosits and under similar conditions to those observed at Vero. Fol- 

 lowing this discovery in the summer of 1925, a joint expedition under 

 the auspices of the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian 

 Institution and Amherst College was organized for the purpose of 

 further research at Melbourne. I was detailed to cooperate with Prof. 

 V. ]\. Loomis of Amherst in carrying out this work, and the six 

 weeks' carefully directed field-work which followed revealed three 

 additional localities where human remains or artifacts were found 

 in direct association with bones of extinct species of animals. All 

 these finds, however, were at or near the top of the fossil bone-bearing 

 layer, and for this reason were not accepted by the anthropologists as 

 undisputed evidence of normal association. 



Time and funds did not permit completing the exploration of these 

 important and extensive deposits at Melbourne, and in February of 

 the present year (1926) I was again temporarily transferred to the 

 Bureau of Ethnology and detailed to continue this work begun by the 

 Amherst-Smithsonian Expedition. Again lack of funds prevented 

 completing the investigation, but the six weeks' work accomplished 



