iiKDLiC'KA] SKELETAL EEMAINS OF EARLY MAN 237 



lay in a pocket of lacustrine ( ?) mud has no significance if the body 

 came there through burial; it is quite possible that soil there offered 

 less resistance to digging than in other parts of the surface. 



It is only too apparent that no antiquity for the Samborombon 

 skeleton has been proved, and the specimen can not well serve further 

 as indisputable evidence of the existence of early man in Argentina. 



THE CHOCORI SKELETON 



History and Earlier Reports 



The skeleton of Chocori was found in 1888, and is reported for the 

 first time by Lehmann-Nitsche in 1907.^ It comes from near the 

 coast not far south of IMiramar, from the same region as the Miramar 

 skull described in another place in this report. (See pi. 35 ; also map, 

 pi. 21.) Tl\e details concerning the find are given by Lehmann- 

 Nitsche as follows: 



^'About the year 1888 Francisco Larrumbe, an employee of the 

 museum [de La Plata], discovered in the vicinity of the small village of 

 Mar del Sud, situated on the seashore in the southern part of the 

 Province of Buenos Aires, abandoned on the surface of the ground, 

 in the mids|:of the lands between the Arroyo Chocori and the Arroyo 

 Seco, at a distance of about 100 meters from the beach, a human 

 skull, with;|ome remains of other bones of the same skeleton. . . . 

 These rcmg^is had been almost completely covered by indurated sand, 

 but the wi^d and water had partially removed the layer and left the 

 skull exposed to tlie extent of some centimeters. In this state it was 

 discovered, with the rest of the osseous remains, by Larrumbe, who 

 brought away all these specimens. I have these details from himself. 



"The fossilization of the bones can not be doubted; their character 

 is identical with that of the bones of fossil animals from the Pampean 

 formation. The skull is of a color varying between whitish and yel- 

 lowish; some parts are impregnated with a blackish substance. . . , 

 The external compact layer has been destroyed in nearly its whole 

 extent by weathering in such a way that the surface became rugose, 

 and in parts where the destruction has penetrated farther, deeply 

 eroded. In the localities not attacked by the destroying agencies, 

 that is to say, at small irregularly disseminated points and in more 

 extended patches over the whole post-coronal region of the skuU, the 

 external lamina is covered by very hard calcareous concretions which 

 can be removed only with difficulty without damaging at the same 

 time the surface of the bone." 



The lot of bones consists of a defective skull with a defective lower 

 jaw, and of fragments of a humerus, radius, femur, tibia(?), and a 

 rib. Lehmann-Nitsche's examinations of these remains gave him in 

 the main the followino- results: 



1 Nouvelles recherches, etc., pp. 321-334. 



