2 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 65 



the braincase, whatever its exact size, represents a member of the 

 family Hominidce, there is wide difference of opinion as to the pos- 

 sibility of joining it with the mandible as parts of one skull. One 

 author regards "this association of human brain and simian features" 

 as precisely what he had anticipated (Smith, 1913, p. 131), while an- 

 other says that it seems to him " as inconsequent to refer the mandible 

 and the cranium to the same individual as it would be to articulate a 

 chimpanzee foot with an essentially human leg and thigh" (Waters- 

 ton, 1913, p. 319). I cannot find, however, that anyone has yet 

 definitely identified the jaw as that of a member of an existing simian 

 genus, or that any zoologist has attempted a detailed comparative 

 study of this part of " E ant hr opus." Dr. Woodward, who regarded 

 the jaw as " almost precisely that of an ape," compared the specimens 

 with young and adult chimpanzee only, while Dr. Gregory chose for 

 his simian standard a female orang. Neither appears to have exam- 

 ined any considerable series of jaws of great apes. 



Dr. Ales Hrdlicka has submitted to me a set of casts of the Pilt- 

 down fossils, and has suggested that I compare the mandible with 

 the jaws of Pongidce in the United States National* Museum. This 

 material includes the mandibles of 22 chimpanzees, 23 gorillas, and 

 about 75 orangs. I have also had access to the series of human 

 skulls in Dr. Hrdlicka's custody. Study of these specimens, together 

 with the general collection of primates in the museum, shows that the 

 characters of the mandible and lower molars throughout the order 

 Anthropoidea are much more diagnostic of groups than has hitherto 

 been realized. It also convinces me that, on the basis of the evidence 

 furnished by the Piltdown fossils and by the characters of all the men, 

 apes, and monkeys now known, a single individual cannot be sup- 

 posed to have carried this jaw and skull. 



Analysis of the Published Opinions that the Jaw and Skull 

 Were Parts of One Animal 



The reasons that have been given for associating the jaw with the 

 skull as parts of one animal are of three kinds : distributional, geolog- 

 ical, and anatomical. They may be briefly reviewed before the char- 

 acters of the fossil are taken up in detail. 



The distributional evidence is negative. It is thus summarized by 

 Dr. Gregory (1914, p. 194) : 



The suggestion that while the braincase was human, the lower jaw belonged 

 to another creature, an ape, is not in harmony with what is already known 

 of the fauna and climate of Europe during pleistocene times. Thousands 



