HRDLICK A] SKELETAL REMAINS 33 
points concerning the specimen, according to these reports, are as 
follows: 
In the month of January, 1884, some quarrying was being done 
by means of dynamite at the foot of the small hill known as “ Penon 
de los Banos,” about 24 miles east of the City of Mexico, and in the 
rocks of the uppermost layer loosened by the explosions a number 
of human bones were found. These were collected by Col. A. Obre- 
gon, who supervised the work, and were delivered by him to the 
minister of public works, who appointed Barcena to make a study 
of them. Several days afterwards Barcena and Castillo, the latter 
a professor of geology, explored the locality of the find. It was 
seen that the human bones came from the uppermost layer of cal- 
careous tufa (in another place called silicified caleareous rock), 
covered with a “recent formation of vegetable earth and marl,” 
containing numerous fragments of pottery of Aztec and of modern 
origin. The calcareous rock was found not to constitute an uninter- 
rupted layer and yielded no bones of animals or pieces of pottery. 
Some shells discovered in it belong to the Quaternary as well as to 
the present-day waters. Softer calcareous rocks were found in the 
neighborhood where were also remains of pottery and roots of plants 
clearly modern. In the eastern part of the hill there is a hot-water 
spring, which forms sediments somewhat similar to those containing 
the bones; but the formation of the rock from this source is very 
slow and not extensive. The conclusions of Barcena and Castillo 
were that the deposit containing the human bones was of lake origin 
and belonged to the “ Upper Quaternary, or at least to the base of 
the present geological age.” Professor Newberry’s opinion, expressed 
in the 7ribune (see bibliography, page 32), was that the rock is a 
comparatively recent travertine or sediment from the thermal waters 
of that locality. 
The human bones are firmly embedded in and their cavities are 
filled with the rock, which is brownish gray in color and very hard. 
The exposed parts are portions of the skull, clavicle, vertebrae, ribs, 
and the bones from the upper and the lower limbs. They lie in dis- 
order, but are apparently parts of the same skeleton. The bones are 
yellowish in color and present aspects of fossilization. 
As to the anthropological characteristics of the bones, Barcena 
writes as follows: ¢ 
The greater part of the cranium having been destroyed, it was not possible 
to determine its diameter and thus classify it. . . . The odontological char- 
acteristics indicate that this man belonged to an unmixed race, the teeth being 
set with regularity and corresponding perfectly the upper with the lower. They 
present the peculiarity, besides, that the canine teeth are not conical, but have 
«The American Naturalist, x1x, 743, 1885. 
9 
v 
3453—No: 33—07 
