346 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY - [bull. 52 



experience? The new method of orientation is radically wrong 

 because it utilizes as a determinative a point (the glabella) which is 

 capable of acting as a fulcrum on which the axis of the skull may be 

 turned at will, or accorcUng to individual view, so long as the point of 

 the true summit of the skull is not defined (as is often the case) with 

 unmistakable precision. The position given to the fragment by 

 Ameghino, particularly with the help of the "craniorientor," makes 

 of it really a monstrosity, impossible both paleontologically and 

 anthropologically. The only service the new appliance has indirectly 

 rendered is that it has led to the publication of the most natural 

 illustration of the Buenos Aires specimen presented (pi. 55) up to 

 the time tliis illustration appeared. 



TETRAPROTHOMO ARGENTINUS 

 History and Reports 



In 1887 F. Ameghino announced the discovery,^ in the barranca 

 of Monte Hermoso, a low cliff facing the sea in the central part of the 

 coast of the Province of Buenos Aires, of vestiges of "a being, more 

 or less closely related to actual man, who was a direct forerunner of 

 the existing humanity." These vestiges consisted of fragments of 

 "tierra cocida, fogones [fire places] — some of the latter vitrified and 

 having the appearance of scoria — split and burnt bones [of animals], 

 and worked stones." In 1889 Professor Ameghino reached definitely 

 the conclusion that such remams can not be the work of a being of 

 the same species or of the same genus as the present man, but belong 

 to "a precursor of man." ^ 



Independently of the above, some timo in the eighties (the exact 

 date is not known), an employee of the Museo de La Plata made for 

 that institution at Monte Hermoso a collection of fossils. Among 

 these bones was found at the museum a humanhke atlas of subaverage 

 size. Wlien this 'atlas was seen by Senor Moreno, at that time the 

 director of the La Plata Museum, it was still partially enveloped in 

 yellowish or yellowish-brown earth."' Soon after its discovery the 

 specimen was forgotten and lay unnoticed in the collections of the 

 museum for many years, until finally it was observed accidentally by 

 Santiago Roth, who freed it from the ''loess," and seeing that the 

 specimen appeared to be a human atlas of small size transferred it 

 to the anthropologic collections of the institution. There again it lay 

 for several years longer without receiving any special consideration, 



1 Monte Hermoso, Buenos Aires, 1887, 10 pp. 



s Contribucion al conocimiento de los mamlferos f(5siles do la Repiiblica Argentina; in Act. Acad. Nac. 

 Cdrdoba, vi, Buenos Aires, 1889, p. 87. 



^ Ameghino (Tetraprothomo, etc., p. 174) says that the specimen was "still in a portion of the rock" but 

 Sefior Moreno expressly stated to the writer that it was in "earth" which held together l)ut was not 

 solidified. Whether or not this earth was sandy can not now be definitely determined. The fact that 

 later the bone was cleanly disengaged from the mass shows further that it could not have been in "rock." 

 Roth speaks of the bone as having been enveloped in "loess" (in Lehmann-Nitsche, Nouvelles recherches, 

 etc., p. 386). 



