Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/247

Rh same experience. I never found in one place anything like a complete skeleton, and as certainly the bones once belonged all to complete skeletons, the bones must have been all dispersed. I have good reason to think that the animals perished in volcanic catastrophes, and that their corpses were brought down in the current of a large Pliocene river. Before, then, the bones were definitely deposited and buried in the old alluvia, they must generally have been separated through the rotting of the flesh, and torn the one from the other, and dragged away with the adhering flesh by crocodiles. Many remains of these preying water-reptiles, and also the traces of their teeth in spongy parts of bones, were found. So this argument against the assumption that the femur ascribed by me to the Pithecanthropus belonged to the same skeleton as the skull-cap fails."

The bones of Pithecanthropus had a chocolate-brown colour, and, in common with all others, human or not, were greatly P.187-fig.62-Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.jpgFIG. 62.—Skull of Pithecanthropus erectus. (After Dr Dubois.). impregnated with calcareous matter, which rendered them exceptionally hard and heavy. The weigh of the femur is stated to have been double that of a recent human femur of the same dimensions.

The Cranium.— External surface (Fig. 62) generally smooth and without any marked ridges ; sutures almost entirely