Page:The World's Most Famous Court Trial - 1925.djvu/281

Rh clearer or more conclusive story of evolution than this, and this is only one of many similar cases.

There is nothing peculiar or exceptional about the fossil record of man. It is considerably less complete than that of the horse, the camel, the elephant and other purely terrestrial mammals, but it is far more complete than that of birds, bats and several types of arboeal mammals. Much has been said by the antievolutionists about the fragmentary nature of the fossil record of man, but many other animals have left traces far less readily deciphered and reconstructed.

The outstanding fact brought out by a study of human paleontology is that of man's antiquity. According to the most expert testimony available, the oldest fossil in the human series is about 500,000 years old; and even this estimate makes man a recent product of evolution as compared with many contemporaneous animals. The earliest fossil remains of the present species of man (homo sapiens) have been very conservatively estimated as 25,000 years old, while other species of extinct man date back to a period at least 100,000 years ago. In addition to several species of the genus homo, anthropologists distinguish three other genera of the man family (Hominidae): Pithecanthropus, Paleanthropus and Eoanthropus, all more primitive than any members of the genus Homo. A brief, but frank, statement about each of these links in the human pedigree is all that is necessary for our purposes.

Pithecanthropus erectus.

This is the so-called Java man, formerly called the ape man or missing link, but now adjudged to be definitely human. The fossil re- mains consist of a complete calvarium or skull cap, three teeth and a left thigh bone. These were scattered over twenty yards of space and were discovered at different times. There is no proof that these remains belong to the same individual or even to the same species, but they are all human in their anatomical characters and they occurred in fossil-bearing rock about 500,000 years old. Many pages of scientific romance have been written about this species; all sorts of more or less justifiable pictures and models of this hypothetical species have been published. It is then refreshing to read the coldly scientific statement of Gregory:

"The association of gibbon-like, skull-top, modernized human femur and subhuman upper molars with reduced posterior moiety, if correctly assigned to one animal, may, perhaps, define pithecanthropus as an early side branch of the Hominidae, which had already been driven away from the center of dispersal in central Asia, by pressure of higher races. But whatever its precise systematic and phylogenetic position, Pithecanthropus or even its constituent parts, the skulltop, the femur and the molars, severally and collectively testify to the close relationship of the late Tertiary anthropoids with the pleistocene hominidae."

Paleanthropus Heidelbergensis.

The genus and species, commonly known as the Heidelberg man, is based solely upon a single lower jaw in an excellent state of preservation, with all teeth in place. The strong points about this find are, first, that it was found in a stratum whose age had been well established; and second, that its discoverer ranks among the leading experts in the field. The age of this venerable relic has been determined as at least 400,000 years, a little more recent than Pithecanthropus. The jaw is very primitive, heavy and clumsily constructed as compared with that of modern man. It lacks the chin prominence, as does the jaw of the gorilla. The teeth are strictly human, though rather larger than those of modern man. This ape-like jaw with human teeth forms an authentic link in the series connecting man with the anthropoids.