132 Minnesota Academy of Science 



Was man a part of this early Pleistocene fauna? As in 

 Europe, the presence in America of human or subhuman re- 

 mains in the latest Pliocene is not settled conclusively. If we 

 accept the testimony of Whitney, Cope, and Williston, men 

 who have given exact and also extensive investigation to this 

 question in America, we must give an affirmative answer. In 

 that case, if the anatomical details of his skeleton could be 

 ascertained, we may reasonably predict that they would re- 

 semble those of Pithecanthropus and of the Heidelberg man, 

 as well as the lately found Eoanthropus of Piltdown, England. 



Probable Origin and Migration of Earliest Man. 



If the earliest representatives of the human species in 

 Europe were a part of the fauna of the later Pliocene (or 

 earliest Pleistocene), they must have originated in the eastern 

 continent, and they must have participated in the migratory 

 movements which characterized that fauna. It may be recalled 

 that the continental areas were then at much greater eleva- 

 tion and of much wider expansion than now, the altitude 

 increasing- toward the north. There was no sea expanse to 

 prevent migration from Siberia to Alaska, nor from Europe 

 to Greenland and thence to North America. It is one of the 

 remarkable discoveries of our great American paleontologists 

 that the large mammals have migrated during Tertiary time 

 over the face of the earth from their various starting points, 

 and that the origin of most of them plainly was in the eastern 

 hemisphere. If man followed the same law, he moved in all 

 directions from Asia. He found not only Australia but also 

 America, and he had time enough to spread over the face of 

 the globe, without setting his foot off dry land. 



The late discoveries and conclusions of the Princeton Ex- 

 peditions to Patagonia show that South America was united 

 by a southern swing of the land area with Australia and Tas- 

 mania, separating the Atlantic entirely from the Pacific, and 

 making the Atlantic ocean a veritable tropical "Mediter- 

 ranean. " 



Either because of the great elevation of the land areas, or 

 because of the decrease of carbonic acid gas in the atmosphere, 

 consequent on the cessation of violence of volcanic ejection 



