Geological Society, \\i 



debris from a quany in the Inferior Oolite near Sherborne. 

 Nothini^ is known of tlie cireuinstanees under wliich it originally 

 oecurred ; but the situation of the quarry is in a small dry valley, 

 on a steep slo|X' faeing south-westwards, and the bone may perhaps 

 have been removed with tlie remains of a rock-shelter. No 

 associated sjweimens of any interest were recovered ; but at the 

 lower end of the same valley, about a quai'ter of a mile distiint, 

 teeth of mammoth and wo(jlly rhinoceros have been found. Like 

 the only other British specimen hitherto discovered — that described 

 by Prof. Boyd Dawkins from the Creswell caves — the drawing is 

 maile on a fragment of rib ; and the neck of the horse is fringed by 

 Hue lines, which indicate the short hogrmane usual in sketches made 

 by the Palajolithic race. 



April 29th, lOU.— Dr. A. Smith Woodward, F.R.S., President; 

 and afterwards William Hill, Vice-President, in the Chair. 



The following communication was read : — 



' On the Lower Jaw of an Anthropoid Ape (^Drt/opithrct(s) 

 from the L^pper Miocene of Lerida (Spain).' By Arthui- Smith 

 Woodward, LL.D., F.Pt.S., Pres.G.S. 



The Author describes and discusses the greater part of a man- 

 dibular ramus and sympln^sis of Dryopithecus fontani, lent to him 

 by Prof. L. ls\. Vidal, of Barcelona. The specimen was found by 

 Senor Jose Colominas in association with the Jlipparion fauna at 

 Seo de Urgel, in the Province of Lerida (Xorthern Spain). It is, 

 therefore, the latest jaw of an Anthropoid Ape hitherto discovered 

 in Em'ope, although probably contemporaneous with the isolated 

 Anthropoid teeth from the Bohnerz of Wiirtemberg and the well- 

 known Anthropoid femm* fi-om the Sands of Eppelsheim (Hesse- 

 Bannstadt). The relatively small size of the first molar is to le 

 regai-ded as a primitive character, lost in all modem Anthropoids 

 except some Gibbons. The shape of the mandibular symphysis is 

 almost remarkably primitive, Avith the smiace of insertion for the 

 digasti'ic muscle nearly as large as that of the ancestral Macaques 

 (for instance, Mesopithecus). The anterior face of the symphysis 

 slopes directly upwards from the front edge of this insertion, as 

 in the Macaques, some Gibbons, and very young individuals of tl e 

 Chimpanzee, Gorilla, and Orang. It thus differs considerably frcm 

 the mandibular symphisis in adult individuals of these existing 

 Apes, in which the lower portion of the slo^De curves backwards into 

 a more or less well-defined llange or shelf of bone, while the digastric 

 insertion is reduced in extent. The mandibiilar sATiiphysis of Dryo- 

 pithecus is, indeed, intermediate in shape between that of the 

 Upper Miocene or Lower Pliocene ^Icsopithccus and the Lower 



