224 BUEEAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bill. 52 



whose carapace lay over the Fontezuelas human bones, was con- 

 temporaneous with the man to whom these bones belonged. This 

 is true even though it is by no meansyet established that the glyp- 

 todons passed away at a very remote date. 



A petrograpliic examination of the bones with the view of deter- 

 mining their state of fossilization has not been made. Adhesions 

 of indurated calcareous matter alone are not incompatible with the 

 relatively modern character of the bones. This subject has been 

 already discussed at length, however, in other sections. 



In physical characteristics the bones are all closely related to those 

 of the Indian skeleton; the femora and the tibiae in particular are 

 typically Indian. The shaft of the tibia, as can well be seen in the 

 illustration (p. 261), presents a flat quadrilateral shape, due to the 

 excessive development of a ridge between the tibialis posticus and 

 the flexor digitorum longus muscles, wliich was frequent in the 

 earlier Europeans, but occurs only very seldom in such a degree in 

 the modern white, is not met with at all in the black, but is found 

 again and again in the same form in the Indian. 



The small stature of the individual, whether female, as claimed by 

 Lehmann-Nitsche, or male, as believed by the writer, does not prove 

 the existence of an early pigmy race, for such stature is not rare in 

 the more central regions of South America, especially in Peru and 

 Bolivia. 



The correctness of the preceding statement will best be seen from 

 the following figures : The bicondylar length of 200 Peruvian femora, 

 taken without selection from the United States National Museum 

 collection, ranges from 33.9 to 44.6 cm., the average being 40 cm. 

 Of the 200 bones, 98 (49 per cent of the whole), show a length less 

 than that of the Fontezuelas femur. 



Again small stature is also met with frequently among the living 

 Indians. It was shown by the writer on another occasion ' that the 

 minimum stature in normal males, even in tribes in which the average 

 height is fair, often descends well below 1 60 cm. In six of the tribes 

 it actually descends below that estimated for the Fontezuelas skele- 

 ton. If the skeleton were that of a female, the conditions would be 

 still less exceptional, for among the 19 tribes in which the women were 

 measured the minimum stature in all but one is below that estimated 

 for the Fontezuelas individual and in two tribes, the Aztec and the 

 Tarasco, neither of which has ever been considered a tribe of pig- 

 mies, even the average stature of the women falls below that of the 

 subject under consideration. 



On the whole, the study of the Fontezuelas fhid leads to the 

 conclusion that, even if some circumstances of the find can not be 



1 Hrdli6ka, A., On the Stature of the Indians of the Southwest and of Northern Mexico; in Putnam 

 Anniversary Volume, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1909, p. 42. 



