NO. 12 JAW OF PILTDOWN MAN MILLER 3 



of mammalian remains of pleistocene age have been discovered in the 

 glacial and interglacial deposits of England and the Continent, but in this 

 highly varied fauna the anthropoid apes have always been conspicuously 

 absent, and there is no reliable evidence that any of the race ever lived in 

 England during the pleistocene epoch. 



In this statement two facts are not given their due weight; first, 

 that the paleontological record is so fragmentary that unexpected 

 discoveries need cause no surprise, and second, that a tooth from 

 Taubach, Saxe-Weimar, described and figured by Nehring in 1895 

 as essentially similar to the first lower molar of a chimpanzee, had 

 already indicated the possible occurrence of the genus Pan in Europe 

 during the pleistocene age. 



The geological evidence in favor of intimate association of the jaw 

 and braincase is merely that the bones were found close together, 

 at one level, and in a uniform condition of fossilization and water- 

 wearing. These circumstances would give additional reasons for 

 associating remains that presented no zoological difficulties ; but when 

 there is obvious incompatibility they do not furnish serious elements 

 of proof. Mr. Dawson's remarks about the deposition of the other 

 mammalian remains found in the same gravel apply with equal force 

 to the skull and the jaw of "Eoanthropus" : the mere fact that they 

 lay near each other means little. He says (Dawson and Woodward, 

 1913, p. 151): 



The occurrence of certain pliocene specimens in a considerably rolled con- 

 dition, while the human remains bore little traces of rolling, suggested a 

 difference as to age, but net to the extent of excluding the possibility of 

 their being coeval. The rolled specimens might have entered the stream 

 farther up the river than the human remains, and thus might have drifted 

 into the hole, or pocket, in the river bed, where they were found, during the 

 same age but in different condition .... It must be admitted that any 

 attempt to fix any exact zoological date for specimens found in a gravel- 

 led is fraught with difficulties. 



The anatomical reasons are (a) that the jaw "corresponds suffi- 

 ciently well in size to be referred to the same specimen [as the brain- 

 case] without any hesitation" (Dawson and Woodward, 1913, p. 

 129) ; (b) that the measurements are " on the whole nearer to those 

 obtained from early human jaws than to those of full-grown apes" 

 (Gregory, 1914, p. 195) ; (c) that the molars recall human rather 

 than simian teeth in their flattened, worn surfaces and their very thick 

 enamel; and (d) that the condyle, or what remains of it, is more like 

 the average human type than that of an ape. As to the relative size of 

 the jaw and braincase nothing very definite can be said except that 



