a 
HRDLICKA] SKELETAL REMAINS i 
remains. In a subsequent work? he states that the pelvic bone was 
taken from a comparatively recent channel known as the Mammoth 
ravine, at the base of a high cliff. 
The cliff consists of a Cretaceous base, a layer of Hocene material, and a sur- 
face deposit of loam or loess. js = 
From a clayey deposit immediately below the yellow loam, bones of the 
Mastodon ohioticus, a species of Megalonyx, bones of the genera Hquus, Bos, 
and others, some of extinct and other presumed to be of living species, had 
been detached, falling to the base of the cliff. Mingled with the rest, the 
pelvic bone of man—os innominatum—was obtained by Doctor Dickeson, of 
Natchez, in whose collection I saw it. It appeared to be quite in the same 
state of preservation, and was of the same black color as the other fossils, 
and was believed to have come, like them, from a depth of about 30 feet 
from the surface [of the cliff]. 
In my Second Visit to America (11, 197, 1846) I suggested, as a possible 
explanation of this association of a human bone with remains of a Mastodon 
and Megalonyx, that the former may possibly have been derived from the 
vegetable soil at the top of the cliff, whereas the remains of extinct mammalia 
were dislodged from a lower position, and both may have fallen into the same 
heap or talus at the bottom of the ravine. The pelvic bone might, I conceived, 
have acquired its black color by having lain for years or centuries in a dark, 
superficial, peaty soil, common in that region. I was informed that there 
were many human bones, in old Indian graves in the same district, stained of 
as black a dye. . . . No doubt, had the pelvic bone belonged to any recent 
Mmammifer other than man, such a theory would never have been resorted to; 
but so long as we have only one isolated case, and are without the testimony 
of a geologist who was present to behold the bone when still engaged in the 
matrix, and to extract it with his own hands, it is allowable to suspend our 
judgment as to the high antiquity of the fossil. 
The Natchez pelvic bone was described in detail and illustrated by 
E. Schmidt in 1872.2 This author takes issue with Doctor Dickeson’s 
statement that the bone belonged to a young individual; he con- 
siders it that of an adult, but damaged in such a way that it resem- 
bles an immature specimen. He takes issue also with Sir Charles 
Lyell regarding the antiquity of the bone, declaring his behef that 
it is not recent, but dates from the Champlain epoch.¢ Schmidt 
does not furnish any new important facts concerning the find, but 
attempts to substantiate his view by a different interpretation of the 
known conditions. Lyell apparently did not accept Schmidt’s con- 
clusions, for the last edition of the former’s Geological Evidences of 
the Antiquity of Man contains exactly the same statement concerning 
the Natchez bone as those published previously; and, as he was a 
geologist and visited the locality, a short time after the find had 
4'The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, 3d ed., 200 et seq., London, 1863 ; 
4th ed., 236 et seq., London, 1873. 
>Zur Urgeschichte Nordamerikas, Arch. f. Anthrop., v, 244 et seq., 1871-72. 
eThe references of Schmidt to the ‘“ Champlain epoch” indicate a different notion of 
this period and a greater antiquity than that now accepted by American geologists. See 
particularly page 233 of his paper. 
3453—No. 33—07 
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