IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
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and also sometimes old ravines which have cut down to greater or 
less depth and then been refilled. Wood has been found buried 
20, 30 even 40 or 50 feet in this way. 
The antinquity of fossil human remains. The facts we have 
considered have an interesting bearing on the age of fossil human 
remains. One can readily see that all over the plain west of the 
debouchure of the Wabonsie the finding of boards, hewed sticks, 
brickbats, tin cans, etc., at the depth of 10, 15, 20 or even 25 feet 
would be nothing surprising, nor would it indicate an antiquity of 
more than 50 years, and in some cases the deposition may have been 
much more recent. The finding of such in the undisturbed mate- 
rial of the terrace might indicate an age of a century or two, ante- 
dating the formation of the south lake by the Missouri. 
The Lansing Skull. This leads us naturally to speak of the so- 
called “Lansing Skull,” much discussed in the papers 4 or 5 years 
ago. It was found under 20 feet of loamy earth, a few miles south- 
east of Lansing, Kan. It was in a loamy terrace in a small valley 
near its junction with the broad bottom lands of the Missouri. It 
was about 12 feet above the high water of 1881. The old Emmet 
mill is about the same height above the level of the same flood 
higher up the river. 
Some prominent geologists, arguing that the loam of the terrace 
was as old as the mass of the loess, made the antiquity of the 
remains to be 10,000 to 50,000 years. Even the most conservative 
judged that “the antiquity of the burial is measured by the time 
occupied by the Missouri river in lowering its bottoms, two miles 
or more in width, somewhere from 15 to 25 feet, a very respectable 
antiquity, but much short of the glacial invasion.” (Chamberlin, 
Journal of Geology, X, No. 7, 1902.) 
But in the light of our study, we may read it still more recent. 
Without any lowering of the flood-plain of the Missouri, we may 
rationally explain it as follows : A small stream, probably flowing 
only part of the time, was discharging into the bottom land near. 
The Missouri which had been close at hand so that the stream had 
cut quite a channel in the underlying limestone, had swung off to 
the opposite side of the plain. The debris of the stream, especially 
in time of flood, began to accumulate and build up, just as we have 
seen in the case of the Wabonsie while the Emmet mill was being 
buried, and more lately since the stream broke west. The human 
skull (in fact we are told the remains are of a woman and child) 
may have been deposited in an overwhelming flood early in this 
stage. This continued till the body of the terrace 20 or 25 feet in 
