AN EXPERIMENT IN RECONSTRUCTION 361 
presume that the points which were identified as marking 
the middle line of the skull along the roof, from forehead 
to occiput, were approximately right. If the two sides 
are still discrepant, it is clear that we are wrong in our 
identification of the middle line of the skull, and we have 
to make other identifications and begin again. 
Having thus built up that part of the roof of the skull 
which is formed by the two parietal bones, the halves are 
again separated and the next step taken is that shown in 
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RIGHTHALF LEFTHAUF 
Fig. 126.— Showing the framework of lines on which the right and left 
halves of a skull are reconstructed from fragments. 
fig. 127. The left temporal bone is placed in position. 
There is not much difficulty in this part of our task. On 
the upper margin of the temporal there was preserved, 
exactly as in the fossil skull, a point at which the temporal 
and parietal bones made a true contact. Besides, even 
supposing such a point of contact were absent, we could 
not go far wrong, because there are so many markings 
on both the outer and inner aspects of the temporal and 
parietal bones to guide us to their correct apposition. 
When the temporal bone is applied we obtain the first 
real indication of what the original width of the skull 
