126 Minnesota Academy of Science 



of an Australian (thin line), and of a chimpanzee (dotted line). 

 (From Sollas, page 46.) 



The Piltdown Skull. 

 The remarkable Piltdown skull was found only a few years 

 ago, and a full description was published in 1913, in the Quar- 

 terly Journal of the Geological Society, of London, Vol. LXIX, 

 where the fortunate discoverers (Dawson and Woodward) 

 have given full descriptions and illustrations. In all respects, 

 so far as the specimens can be interpreted, the Piltdown man 

 and the Heidelberg man are nearly allied, almost identical. 

 This similarity extends to the great width and strength of the 

 ascending ramus, the shallowness of the sigmoid notch, and 

 the undulating lower line of the horizontal ramus. Other 

 resemblances might be noted, but it is sufficient to say that 

 the Piltdown skull is placed unhesitatingly in the same group 

 as the Heidelberg jaw, and that, as they appear, from the fos- 

 sil associates, to have lived at practically the same date, they 

 are representatives of a once wide-spreading type of the pri- 

 mates which hunted the elephant, the boar, the mastodon, the 

 hippopotamus, and the beaver, over an extensive area in cen- 

 tral Europe, and spread also westwardly into England. The 

 channel which now separates the British Isles from the conti- 

 nent was not yet formed, and that gives a pre-Glacial date for 

 the type. As these three specimens are so nearly allied, and 

 are found at about the same geological date (upper Pliocene or 

 near the base of the Pleistocene) they can be set aside easily 

 into one group, and in a previsional way can be denominated 

 Pliocene Man, but without any very definite limitation to the 

 significance of the term. From southern Asia to western 

 Europe a similar and almost identical type of early man or 

 man's precursor was spread over the earth. 



The Question of Eoliths. 



Perhaps the most important part of the late discovery at 

 Piltdown is yet to be mentioned. For several years the ques- 

 tion of the true nature and origin of certain flints found in 

 Europe has been discussed by European archeologists. They 

 are called eoliths, and although they show signs of artificial 



