32 THE HUMAN SPECIES 



are the eye-teeth specially small. Nevertheless, the Dryo- 

 pithecus has so much in common with man that it must rank as 

 one of the most remarkable phenomena in the whole pedigree 

 of man. 



To the Dryopithecus belong probably also the teeth of 

 anthropoid apes, found since 1850 in the pisolitic iron ore of the 

 Swabian Alps, consisting of one lower pre- molar (milk-tooth), 

 two upper molars, and seven lower molars. The two upper 

 molars were at first declared by Owen to be human teeth, and 

 Quenstedt was the first to assign them to an anthropoid, though 

 he admits that their resemblance to human teeth is so close as 

 to be misleading. Branco gives an exact description of each 



tooth, and arrives at 

 the conclusion that they 

 bear the closest resem- 

 blance to those of a 

 gibbon, in fact a Dryo- 

 pithecus. Whether this 

 particular Dryopithecus 

 was a Dryopithecus 

 Fontani, or the mem- 

 ber of another species, 



FIG. 2. Restored skull of the Pithecanthropus he leaves undecided. 



Doubt and uncertainty 



surround the most recent important discovery of anthropo- 

 logical palaeontology, namely, the fossil remains found in Java 

 (1891) in the Upper Tertiary strata and described by the 

 discoverer, E. Dubois, 1 as Pithecanthropus erectus, an inter- 

 mediate form between the anthropoid apes and man (see 

 Fig. 2). The remains found include a third right molar 

 tooth, a left femur and a second left molar. As Dubois 

 points out, the extraordinary resemblance to man is less in 

 the teeth, though they too are sufficiently characteristic, than 

 in the cranium and femur. The most striking points about 

 the skull are the absence of the special structure peculiar 

 to all other anthropoids, and its great capacity, reckoned at 

 990-1000, or two-thirds of the capacity of the human skull. 



1 E. Dubois, Pithecanthropus erectus, eine menschenahnliche Uebergangsform 

 aits Java. Batavia, 1894. 



