358 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHKOLOGY [bull. 52 



antero-posteriorly ; however, the bones show but Httle morphologic 

 relation. 



T]i,e torsion of the femur '4s encountered, more or less accentuated, 

 in all mammals, but reaches the liighest grade in the femur of man 

 and especially in that of the negro races. ['] Following man in this 

 feature, come the anthropomorphs, especially the gorilla, wliich 

 confirm the supposition that the liigher grade of torsion results from 

 the passage of the quadruped to biped locomotion. In this respect 

 it would then be interesting to be able to determine the grade of 

 torsion in Tetraprothomo. Unfortunately the head and neck of the 

 bone are missing, but there e:5dsts the base of the specimen, which gives 

 a sufficient sustaining point for the possibihty of assuming that the 

 femoral torsion has been still greater than that in the actual man. . . . 

 This deduction finds complete confirmation in the lateral torsion of 

 the shaft of the bone, to which it appears the anatomists have given 

 as 3^et no attention, but which nevertheless, under this point of view, 

 is of still greater importance than the femoral torsion determined 

 by the change of orientation, in the inverse sense, of the extrem- 

 ities. [-] . . . 



"The lateral torsion of the body of the bone and the remaining 

 characteristics which accompany the same, are encountered only in 

 the femur of man, although not in as accentuated a form as in that of 

 the Tetraprothomo, owing to modifications which have been produced 

 in relativel}^ recent time." 



Besides the foregoing, numerous other minor features of the bone 

 are described, all of which according to Ameghino point in the same 

 direction — that is, to the relation of the femur to that of man — while 

 at the same time the specimen preserves generic differences. The 

 femora of Spy and^vejero show a still closer morphologic relation 

 with the Monte Hermoso specimen than with the femur of the pres- 

 ent Homo. 



On the basis of the length of the bone tlie stature of the Tetrapro- 

 thomo is estimated, as has already been seen, to have been not more 

 than 1.05 to 1.10 m. The carriage of the body was perfectly erect 

 and the body was in relation to the stature proportionately stouter 

 than it is in the present man. The skull was, proportionately to the 

 height of the being, of considerable size, in accord with and in rela- 

 tion to the stoutness of the body; the skull was also proportionately 

 larger than in man. 



As to the biologic classification of the Tetraprothomo, the being 

 "can not be considered as an anthropomorph." In respect to both 

 the femur and the atlas "it resembles man much more than it does 

 any of the known anthropomorphs. . . . Therefore Tetraprothomo 



1 The fact is, on the contrary, that it is considerably less in the African and the Americanized negro 

 than in either tlie whites or the Indians.— A. H. 

 [2 Expression not very clear.] 



