116 
THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
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two New Guinea skulls, and one New Zealander, a tongue-shaped process of the squamous 
temporal intervened between the parietal and alisphenoid and articulated with the 
frontal. In the skulls of a Fuegian, two Australians, four Admiralty Islanders, four 
Sandwich Islanders, two Chatham Islanders, a Loyalty Islander, a Mallicollese, and a 
New Zealander, epipteric bones were found in the pterion on one or both sides. 
Owing to the squamoso-frontal articulation in the region of the pterion being a 
common character in many though not in all of the anthropoid apes, the occurrence of a 
similar articulation in the human skull has been regarded as a mark of degradation. In 
a paper which I wrote on the skull of the Gorilla, nearly twenty years ago , 1 I showed 
that the squamoso-frontal articulation although very common was not constant in the 
skulls of anthropoid and other apes, and that it might occur not only in the crania of 
savage man, e.g ., Negro, Hottentot, Caffre, Bushman, Sandwich islander, and Australian, 
but also in Hindoos, Ceylonese, and Europeans, and I stated that it was to be regarded as 
an individual peculiarity and not a racial character. I also referred to the triquetral 
bones occasionally present in the spheno-parietal suture as an approximation to this 
arrangement. Shortly afterwards Dr. H. Allen published observations on the Morton 
collection in Philadelphia , 2 and pointed out that twenty-three of the eleven hundred 
skulls in that collection had this articulation, viz., twelve Negroes and one each of the 
following: — Anglo-Saxon, Pelasgic, Swede, Chinese, Hindoo, Bengalese, Mandar, Seminole, 
Blackfoot and Iroquois Indian, and Esquimaux. Important memoirs on this subject have 
subsequently been written by Hyrtl , 3 Wenzel Gruber , 4 Calori , 5 Virchow , 6 Zuckerkandl , 7 
Ranke , 8 Retzius , 9 Anoutschine , 10 Stieda , 11 and Schlocker . 12 In connection also with 
the non-articulation of the ali-sphenoid with the parietal, the presence and frequency 
of small triquetral or epipteric bones in the pterion has been inquired into, and 
the result has been to extend still further our knowledge of the races and varieties 
of men in which either a squamoso-frontal articulation or epipteric bones have been 
seen, so that now there is scarcely a race or variety in which they have not been 
described. 
In each group of skulls, except the Fuegian, specimens occurred in which a suture 
1 Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin., January 16, 1865. 
2 Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philad., No. 1, p. 137, 1867. 
3 Vergangenheit und Gegenwart des Museums an der Wiener 'Universitat, 1869. 
4 Mdm. Acad. Sci. St. Petcrsb., 1874. 
s Sull’ anomala sutura, the., Bologna, 1874. 
9 Abhandl. d. Jc. Alcad. d. JViss. Berlin , 1875 ; and Zeitschr.f. Ethnol., Bd. xii. p. 1, 1880. 
7 Reise der Novara, Anthrop. Tlieil., p. 110, 1875. 
8 Beitriige zur Anthrop. u. Urgeschichte Bayerns, Bd. i., 1877. 
9 Finska Kranier, Stockholm, 1878. 
10 Bull. de. la Soc. d’ Anthrop. de Petris, 1878. 
11 Archivf. Anthrop., Bd. xi. p. 110, 1879. 
12 Anomalien des Pterion, Inaugural Dissertation, Dorpat, 1879. In addition to the above, isolated cases of squamoso- 
frontal articulation had previously been observed by Meckel, Owen, Henle, and von Baer. 
