hedliCka] skeletal REMAINS OF EARLY MAN" 321 



forward. I supposed they had actually played at 'bochas, ' which 

 would require half a dozen skulls, hence my belief that five or six 

 skulls had been found, whereas only one was found in the Rudder 

 Pit." 



The foregoing meager information concerning the circumstances of 

 the find was all that could be gathered. This differs from that pub- 

 hshed by Professor Ameghino mainly in that the specimen is repre- 

 sented to have been found not in the lowest but in the upper part 

 of the rudder-pit, and in sand instead of clay; also, that another 

 human skull was found in sand at Dock No. 4, but nothing more 

 definite is known as to its exact position. Finally, the excavations 

 for Dock No. 1 yielded no bones of animals. In Dock No. 3 a 

 glyptodon skeleton was found in the tosca, and there was also a mas- 

 todon tusk at about the same level (Simpson). 



Mr. Willis and the writer visited the dry dock, saw the rudder- 

 cavity, and later on, through the courtesy of Mr. Simpson, they 

 were able to obtain the photographs reproduced in the accompanying 

 illustrations (pis. 47, 48), which show the condition of the dry dock 

 at the time the rudder-pit was being excavated. 



The specimen donated to the Museo Nacional by Mr. Junbr was 

 discovered in recent 3'ears in the collections of that institution by 

 Professor Ameghino, studied minutely by him, and described^ as a 

 remnant of the skull of Diprothomo platensis, from the standpoint of 

 evolution a second or premediate forerunner of man, who lived in 

 the Lower Pliocene. 



This far-reaching determination Professor Ameghino supports by 

 an exhaustive geologic and comparative anatomic dissertation, the 

 principal items of which are given in the following paragraphs. 



As mentioned before, Professor Ameghino states that the fragments 

 of the skull came from the lowest portion of the rudder-pit and that 

 they lay in a stratum of gray clay below the tosca, which constitutes 

 in part the floor of the dry dock, and below a subjacent layer of 

 quartzy sand. The gray clay he identifies as belonging to the upper- 

 most portion of the Pre-Ensenadean stratum, which is the most 

 inferior part of the Pampean formation (p. 120), and belongs to the 

 base of the Pliocene.^ 



> Ameghino, F., Le Diprothomo platensis, un prf^curseur de rhomme du pliocene inferieur de Buenos 

 Aires; in Anal. Mus. Nac. Buenos Aires, xix (ser. iii, t. xii), 1909, pp. 107-209. Pages cited below follow 

 the work here cited. 



* On page 110 the lower part of the Pliocene is represented as occupied by the Post-Puelchean hiatus, 

 while in the table on page 12-4 the lowest part of the Pliocene is given to the Pre-Ensenadean, and the Post- 

 Puelchean hiatus occupies the first part of the Miocene. 



21535°— Bull. 52—12 21 



