HRDLICKA] SKELETAL KEMAINS 33 



points concerning the specimen, according to these reports, are as 

 follows : 



In the month of January, 1884, some quarrying was being done 

 by means of dynamite at the foot of the small hill known as &quot; Penon 

 de los Banos,&quot; about 2 miles east of the City of Mexico, and in the 

 rocks of the uppermost layer loosened by the explosions a number 

 of human bones were found. These were collected by Col. A. Obre- 

 gon, who supervised the work, and were delivered by him to the 

 minister of public works, who appointed Barcena to make a study 

 of them. Several days afterwards Barcena and Castillo, the latter 

 a professor of geology, explored the locality of the find. It was 

 seen that the human bones came from the uppermost layer of cal 

 careous tufa (in another place called silicified calcareous rock), 

 covered with a &quot; recent formation of vegetable earth and marl,&quot; 

 containing numerous fragments of pottery of Aztec and of modern 

 origin. The calcareous rock was found not to constitute an uninter 

 rupted layer and yielded no bones of animals or pieces of pottery. 

 Some shells discovered in it belong to the Quaternary as well as to 

 the present-day waters. Softer calcareous rocks were found in the 

 neighborhood where were also remains of pottery and roots of plants 

 clearly modern. In the eastern part of the hill there is a hot-water 

 spring, which forms sediments somewhat similar to those containing 

 the bones; but the formation of the rock from this source is very 

 slow and not extensive. The conclusions of Barcena and Castillo 

 were that the deposit containing the human bones was of lake origin 

 and belonged to the &quot; Upper Quaternary, or at least to the base of 

 the present geological age.&quot; Professor Newberry s opinion, expressed 

 in the Tribune (see bibliography, page 32), was that the rock is a 

 comparatively recent travertine or sediment from the thermal waters 

 of that locality. 



The human bones are firmly embedded in and their cavities are 

 filled w T ith the rock, which is brownish gray in color and very hard. 

 The exposed parts are portions of the skull, clavicle, vertebra?, ribs, 

 and the bones from the upper and the lower limbs. They lie in dis 

 order, but are apparently parts of the same skeleton. The bones are 

 yellowish in color and present aspects of fossilization. 



As to the anthropological characteristics of the bones, Barcena 

 writes as f ollow T s : a 



The greater part of the cranium having been destroyed, it was not possible 

 to determine its diameter and thus classify it. . . . The odontological char 

 acteristics indicate that this man belonged to an unmixed race, the teeth being 

 set with regularity and corresponding perfectly the upper with the lower. They 

 present the peculiarity, besides, that the canine teeth are not conical, but have 



a The American Naturalist, xix, 743, 1885, 

 3453 No. 3307 3 



