hedliCka] skeletal REMAINS OP EARLY MAN 291 



name of the finder, and states that it conies from the Lower Pliocene. 

 Lehmann-Nitsche/ after having become a member of the staff of tlie 

 Miiseo de la Plata, found that the discoverer of the specimen was no 

 longer employed by the institution, but obtained the following details 

 from Preparator E. Beaufils: ''Beaufils, charged with collecting Pam- 

 pean fossils, discovered [in about 1888], among other things, in a 

 place near the cliffs which face the sea, not far from the little village 

 Mar del Sud, between the arroyos La Tigra and Seco, mentioned 

 already in connection with the Chocori find and near the place 

 where these human remains were discovered, the carapace of a Glyp- 

 todon. . . . One month later, Andreas Canesa, charged also with 

 collecting fossils for the museum, thought that at the same point, which 

 was stm plainly recognizable by the eminences of earth that covered 

 it, he could still find more fossils. He excavated in the neighborhood 

 and discovered a human skull." This is all that was learned from 

 Beaufils in regard to the find; from Canesa himself there is no infor- 

 mation whatever. 



About eight years after the find, in 1896, according to Lehmann- 

 Nitsche,^ Messrs. Moreno, Roth, Nordenskjold, and Lahitte visited 

 the locality from which the skull came and found there some bones 

 of a scelidotherium and other fossil animals.^ On this occasion Roth 

 identified the deposits from which the specimen was believed to have 

 come as Quaternary, Superior Pampean. 



This wholl}^ insufficient evidence regarding the most important 

 data bearing on the antiquity of the specimen would seem to be 

 alone more than sufficient to cause the discarding of the Miramar 

 skull from serious consideration as a representative of early man in 

 Argentina, or at least to relegate it to the uncertain. But the 

 cranium shows fossilization as well as some peculiar morphologic 

 features, and OAving largely to these was given by Professor Ame- 

 ghino the consequential position of the Homo pampseus, genetically the 

 first representative of the human family. For Lehmann-Nitsche, 

 who carefully studied every part of the skeleton but did not remain 

 uninfluenced by the "fossility" of the skull, the bones are not so 

 ancient nor so important as claimed by Ameghino, nevertheless they 

 are accepted, in spite of the defective evidence, as belonging to the 

 Superior Pampean deposits, believed to be of Quaternary age.^ 



1 Nouvelles recherches, etc., pp. 335-336. 



2 Ibid., p. 335; a reference is here given as to where this information was first published (in Globus^ 

 Braunschweig, 1S91, No. 9, p. 135), but the place indicated is occupied by an article on Korsika. 



' There are no details. 



* " Under no condition can the skull come from the Inferior Pampean and consequently it slMuld not be 

 attributed so great an antiquity; it is certain that the skull is fossil in the true sense of the word and that it is 

 derived from the Superior Pampean, from which other human remains are already known." — Lehmann- 

 Nitsche, Nouvelles recherches, p. 335, in the brief account of the visit to the locality with Moreno and 

 others, mentioned above in the text. 



