hkdliCka] skeletal EEMAINS OF EAELY MAN 253 



Descriptive notes : The shape of the shaft at the middle, with excep- 

 tion of the hnea aspera, is nearly round ; this type is more proper to 

 youth, but is found now and then in adults, in Indians and also in 

 whites. The thickness of the walls is moderate. There was a pro- 

 nounced linea aspera, in part compensatory for a rather marked back- 

 ward bend of the shaft. It also reached lower than in some bones, but 

 not abnormally so. Its inferior termination presents the common 

 form. Besides tliis backward curve, the bone presents also, above the 

 middle, a trace of a bend outward. Both of these features are com- 

 mon enough in the femora of Indians as well as in those of other race^. 



The specimen shows further pronounced lateral torsion, so that 

 the lateral axis of the shaft at the middle and that at the widest part 

 of the subtrochanteric flattening form together an angle of about 55 

 degrees. Instances of similar torsion, however, are not rare in Indian 

 femora. 



There is no third trochanter, and the trochanter minor is in exactly 

 the place in which it is found in a modern femur used by Professor 

 Ameghino for comparisons. 



The angle of the neck was very obtuse, indicating a male of no 

 advanced age. The line of the insertion of the vastus internus and 

 the cruralis is fairly well marked and runs obliquely down from below 

 the head to the linea aspera, being in exactly the same place as on 

 the modern laboratory femur, above referred to. 



The rest of the bone is so ordinary that further description would 

 be superfluous. 



Other hones. — Besides the above, the material from Ovejero and 

 vicinity seen at the Museo Nacional consists of a not entirely normal 

 skull of a child (probably slightly hydrocephahc), and of numerous 

 fragments of various bones. A separate description of each of these 

 pieces would unnecessarily overburden this paper. They do not 

 present one feature of any special morphologic significance, and, 

 with all the separately mentioned specimens, may be confidently 

 classed as ordinary Indian. 



A number of the larger pieces of long bones show gnawings and 

 possibly also claw scratches, some of which may resemble cuts with 

 a knife; but, on close examination, especially with a magnifying 

 glass, one can generally detect characteristics, particularly occa- 

 sional doubhng and parallehsm of the cuts, pecuhar to the teeth of 

 rodents. Tlie same phenomenon is frequently observed in Indian 

 bones buried in the loess in North America. One piece of a femur 

 shows pathologic thickening of the walls. 



The Sotelo skeleton found hy the writer. — Tliis specimen (No. 263964, 

 U.S.Nat.Mus.) is represented by more than a dozen fragments 

 of the skull, four isolated molar teeth with parts of the jawbones 



