30 Guide to the Fossil Remains of Man 
same age as the deposit or has been buried by man at a later date. 
Such doubt exists, for example, in reference to the Galley Hill 
skeleton (Table-case 1), which is quite of a modern type, but was 
found in one of the oldest Pleistocene gravels in the Thames 
valley. Finally, it may be added that near the mouth of a river, 
sediment often accumulates so rapidly that burial at a considerable 
depth does not necessarily imply great age. The skeleton found 
at a depth of 30 feet in Thames mud during the excavation of 
Tilbury Docks (Table-case 1) is, indeed, probably not older than 
the Neolithic period, and may be of a still later date. The 
difficulty of the subject is therefore great, and the chief need for 
the future is more material with the exact circumstances of each 
discovery carefully recorded. 
In South Africa remains of modern man seem to occur in 
deposits of Pleistocene age ; while in Queensland, Australia, one 
well-fossilised skull has been met with in a river deposit which 
contains bones of Diprotodon and other extinct pouched mammals. 
The last-mentioned specimen, from Talgai in the Darling Downs, 
now in the Australian Museum, Sydney, is of great interest, because 
although it is a typical skull of the Australian race, it has an 
unusually large mouth, and the upper and lower canine teeth 
interlock as in Piltdown man. In shape, however, these inter- 
locking canines resemble the permanent teeth (not the milk-teeth) 
of ordinary man. 
All the human remains hitherto found fossil in America also 
seem to belong to modern man, although some of them were 
associated with the bones of extinct animals. The skeleton from 
an indurated beach in the Island of Guadaloupe, West Indies, 
exhibited in Pier-case 2, probably does not date back further than 
the historic period in that region. 
CONCLUSION. 
The general conclusion is that man, having a skeleton essentially 
identical with the existing one, has lived in western Europe for a 
long period during great changes of climate, much alteration in 
geographical contour, and the dying out of numerous wild quad- 
rupeds. He was here long before the British Isles were separated 
by sea from the mainland of Europe. His immediate predecessor 
was a form of man (the Neanderthal or Mousterian) which more 
nearly approached the apes in the retreating forehead, the pro- 
