Broken Bones

Archaeology deals with the cultural history of Homo Sapiens. Back of that comes paleontology, dealing with human or animal remains which have left their impress in geological strata at varying depths.

The American Museum of Natural History is the most fertile source of this sort of research and sends out annually a large number of expeditions. Its third Asiatic expedition has just left Peking under the leadership of Roy Chapman Andrews, the well-known naturalist and explorer. It will prospect for six months the treasures of the Gobi Desert and Inner Mongolia, known to be rich in fossil flora and fauna, including mastodons and mammoths, which are believed to have wandered eastward from their source in central Asia. Popular expectations with regard to the " missing link " of human evolution and the site of the "Garden of Eden" are hardly likely to be realized, however.

Other fossil discoveries which are now attracting scientific interest are:

1) A human skull claimed to be of the Tertiary period, found in Patagonia by Dr. J. G. Wolf, under the auspices of La Plata Museum. If this claim can be substantiated, ape-men existed on the earth several hundred thousand years earlier than has hitherto been proved. But the circumstances are suspicious. The skull was found in the possession of a white settler who dug it out of Pampas deposits, which may or may not be Tertiary. Scientific men are now on the way to Patagonia (which has furnished "mare's nests" before) to investigate the claim.

2) Workmen at St. Ouen, on the Island of Jersey, English Channel, found a prehistoric skull at first claimed to be that of an ape-woman older than Pithecanthropus (500,000 years), our earliest known near human ancestor. But Sir Arthur Keith and Dr. Smith Woodward, of the British Museum, believe it to be of the Neolithic period (from 5,000 to 10,000 years old). It was found in a burial place of people of that time, where bones and implements are plentiful.

3) A deformed female skull, discovered in a Missouri cave, has been received by Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, of the United States National Museum. The shape was probably produced by bandaging the infant head, which was a common practice among the Aymaras and other South American Indian tribes. Only two such skulls had previously been found in North America.

4) A human skeleton was found near Dallas, Texas, in a fossil bed believed to be of the Pleistocene (ice) age (about 300,000 years ago). Many authorities think it belongs to a more modern type.

5) Excavation for a new hotel in Washington, D. C., unearthed a subterranean cypress swamp containing fossil diatoms, minute plants which lived in the Pleistocene age. " Oldest inhabitants" are arguing with the scientists that the swamp existed in their boyhood, but the evidence favors its antiquity.

Glyptotherium, a fossil giant armadillo, recovered from the Pliocene deposits of southern Arizona by Dr. J. W. Gidley, of the United States National Museum, has been brought to Washington and mounted. He is seven feet eight inches long, stands three feet high, and his shell weighs half a ton. Modern armadillos rarely exceed two feet in length.