SOME NOTES ON THE EARLY HOMINIDiE 218 
On examining a Neanderthal skull from the front, the one 
outstanding feature which most forcibly strikes one is the 
enormous development of the superciliary ridges and glabella. 
There is not only an enormous exaggeration of these parts, 
but they have as it were all become joined up so as to form a 
continuous elevation extending from the external angular 
process of one side, traversing the region immediately above 
the supra-orbital margin, becoming confluent with the glabella, 
and, passing above the supra-orbital margin of the opposite 
side to the region of the opposite external angular process, 
forming what has been termed the frontal torus. (See 
Eig. 10.) 
The existing race which makes some approach to this con- 
dition is the Australian, but only in a very modified degree : 
the only portion of the torus which in any way approaches 
in size the Neanderthal skull being the region of the glabella. 
Coursing along the upper margin of the torus is a depression, 
which by its presence greatly adds to the massive appearance 
of this high ridge. There is nothing homologous to this in 
the Australian skull. 
The bony orbits are peculiarly large, and slope, as it were, 
upwards on to the region of the forehead — a characteristic well 
marked in the anthropoid apes. 
The anterior nasal aperture is of great size, and it is safe to 
surmise that the fleshy parts of the nose were very massive. 
In some of the Neanderthal race marked prognathism 
was present, as in the skull from the cave of Le Moustier ; 
while in others, as in the Gibraltar skull, orthognathism was 
the normal condition. 
The lower jaw shows hardly any rudiment of a chin, the 
jaw itself being very massive. 
The Heidelberg jaw showed this characteristic in an even 
more accentuated form ; so it would be just to conclude that 
the chinless condition (which is markedly simian) is gradually 
disappearing. 
The canine teeth are very large, the incisors being small. 
In Homo sapiens the first molar is larger than molar 2, and 
molar 2 than molar 8 ; in Homo N eanderthdlensis this order 
is reversed. 
Vol. VI.— No. 12. Q 
