VERTEBRATA AT VERO. 
67 
tocene; while No. 2 is thought to belong to the early part of the 
epoch. However, the geologists who have studied the deposits, 
both those who argue for the late age of beds and those who believe 
them to be older, think that there was no great interval between 
them. 
As regards the origin of the vertebrate remains which are found 
in the muck bed at Vero, the writer believes that the animals left 
their remains where they are now found, and that they were not 
washed into that stratum from some other place of previous burial. 
In too many cases are two or more bones of one individual of an 
extinct species found closely associated to have been transported 
even a few hundred yards. The bones of the animals do not pre¬ 
sent the abrasions and the polishing which transportation would 
produce. Again, had the bones of both No. 2 and No. 3 been 
washed in from some common source and at no great interval of 
time apart, there appears to be no good reason why the percentage 
of extinct forms in the two should not be practically the same. 
The two deposits found at Vero, and at present known as No. 2 
and No. 3, and the remains of fossil animals found in them, are of 
especial interest, because in both of these strata have been found 
bones of human beings. In stratum No. 3, in addition to skeletal 
remains, implements made by man are numerous. 
We are, therefore, confronted by questions as to the antiquity of 
those human remains. As has already been indicated, the writer 
believes that the deposits in question are not only of Pleistocene age 
but of early or middle Pleistocene. He is also convinced, after 
having examined the locality and collected fossils from it, that the 
human remains are as old as the deposits in which they are found. 
The arguments in favor of the last proposition have already been 
presented by Doctor Sellards. 
The writer will here briefly present some evidences which go to 
show that men possessing a culture much like that of modern 
Indians existed in America at least as far back as the Sangamon 
interglacial stage, about the middle of the Pleistocene, and possibly 
still earlier. 
a. In 1846, Dr. M. W. Dickeson exhibited before the Academy of Natural 
Sciences of Philadelphia a part of a human pelvis which had been found in a 
blue clay below the loess, and two feet below bones of megalonyx and other 
extinct animals. Chemical analysis of the human bone has shown that it is more 
highly fossilized than the animal bones. 
