Piltdown Man 
9 
by the Ouse, but by some river which has disappeared. It is 
therefore an unusually old gravel preserved by accident, and any 
fossil remains contained in it must naturally be of special interest. 
Such remains were first found by workmen when digging the 
gravel for use on roads, and among them was the human skull 
which they broke up and threw away. One fragment was 
fortunately preserved and given to Mr. Dawson, who recognised 
its importance and at once began a search for the remainder of 
the specimen. Enough pieces were recovered to show the essential 
peculiarities of the skull. £art of the lower jaw and the lower 
canine tooth were eventually found in .the adjacent undisturbed 
gravel, and both implements of human workmanship and frag- 
mentary remains of animals were also met with. 
As shown by the collection exhibited in Table-case 1, the 
animal remains are of two kinds. Cusps of a molar tooth of 
Mastodon, some broken pieces of a molar tooth of an early 
elephant (Stegodon), and some fragments of molar teeth of 
Bhinoceros are more highly mineralised than any mammalian 
teeth previously found in a superficial river-gravel, and closely 
resemble fossil teeth from the Pliocene Bed Crag of Suffolk. 
They are indeed Pliocene fossils, but they are so much broken 
and worn that they must have reached the Piltdown gravel by 
being washed out of some older geological formation. Teeth of 
Hippopotamus and beaver {Castor) and the base of the antler of a 
red deer (Cervus elaphus) are less mineralised and more likely to 
be of the same age as the gravel itself. Though too imperfect for 
certain determination, these are probably early Pleistocene fossils. 
The associated flints are also of two kinds. Many of the 
brown chipped pieces of tabular flint are identical in shape and 
style with the supposed primitive human implements, termed 
Eoliths, occurring in very old gravels on the North Downs near 
Ightham, Kent. They are often much waterworn, and may 
therefore, like the Pliocene teeth, have been derived from some 
older geological formation. The rare flints bearing obvious signs 
of human workmanship represent an extremely old type of 
Palaeolithic implement, with one face produced by not more than 
one or two blows, the other face shaped by few coarse chippings 
(fig. 1). All these have sharp edges, not waterworn, and are 
therefore almost certainly of the same age as the gravel itself. 
Hence the Piltdown gravel contains Pliocene mammalian 
remains and probably Pliocene flints which must have been 
derived from an older source, besides apparently Pleistocene 
