surmounted the marne of the district at a height of some 30 or 40 metres above the level of the river Eure. The skull was broken by the workmen at the time of the discovery, and only the anterior portion of it was saved by M. Doré-Delente, who sent it to G. de Mortillet with descriptive details of the circumstances under which it had been disinterred. From Mortillet's description (L'Homme, 1884, p. 48), the skull had prominent superciliary ridges and a low, retreating forehead. Although the frontal prominences were distinctly marked, and its general simian characters less pronounced than those of the Neanderthal skull, M. Mortillet accepted it as belonging to that race. No worked objects were detected in association with the skull, but in other parts of the brick-clays flint implements characteristic of the Acheuléen or Moustérien epoch had been found. Mortillet pronounces it to be, if not the most characteristic, certainly one of the best dated specimens of l'Homme Moustérien.
In 1892 M. Dore-Delente came into possession of another skull of the same Neanderthaloid type as that of Marcilly-sur-Eure, which was discovered in a similar brick-clay deposit at Beaudeval, Commune of Bréchamps (Eure-et-Loire). It was less damaged than the former, and in the hands of M. Manouvrier it yielded the following dimensions :—
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Antero-posterior |
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diameter |
188 mm |
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The skull was associated with other bones of the skeleton, but on being laid aside for further examination, they were, through a mistake of one of the workmen, reburied in the debris and lost.
Manouvrier describes this skull as essentially belonging to the Neanderthal-Spy race. It showed a retreating forehead, a flattened calvaria, but a marked attenuation of the projecting upper border of the orbits. The less pronounced Neanderthaloid characters of both the Bréchamps and Marcilly-sur-Eure skulls he attributed to the fact that the men they represented were smaller and less powerful than the Neanderthal-Spy folk. Their morphological characters being in accordance
