fragments were of exactly the same age, and very probably early Pliocene. Further, these remains, in connection with the anatomical investigation of the skeletal fragments, have firmly convinced me that these fragments are all parts of one and the same skeleton. The total result of the discussion of these fragments that has been carried on by many eminent anatomists in no way contradicts this conclusion; on the contrary, it raises the presumption that it is highly improbable that they do not belong together.
A few anatomists hold that the fragments are parts of a human skeleton; according to others there is no doubt but that they belonged to individuals of the same race. Others, again, consider the femur to be quite human, while they think that the skullcap and the teeth must have belonged to the most anthropoid of all anthropoid apes. A few anatomists, however, agree with me in the opinion that a femur entirely human in character might nevertheless belong to the same individual as this ape-like skull, because a similar function would entail a similar form. Besides, this femur has certain peculiarities that I have not been able to find in a single one of some hundreds of thigh bones, so that it is not human in the usual sense of the word.
If we adopt the view that the skullcap is that of an ape, and, indeed, as must be acknowledged, that of the most man-like of all, but that the femur is that of a man, then both of these fragments must have been deposited at the same time in what was very probably an early Tertiary bed. We would then have in this case two specially important, but wholly unknown, closely related forms found together. Now, on the one hand, human bones have never been recognized below the Middle Pleistocene, much less as low as the Tertiary, and, on the other, but few remains of apes have been found, and these are much smaller, more significant, and by no means as human in character as the skullcap in question. There is therefore little probability that this view is correct. The view that these fragments were derived from different individuals of one and the same race has also very little to support it. After explorations which have been extended for five years over hundreds of square kilometers of exposed strata more than 350 meters thick and containing everywhere a numerous and homogeneous fauna, I have found, with but one possible exception, nothing which could be referred to this or any similar race.
According to all paleontological experience, the parts must have belonged to a single skeleton in case their anatomical configuration does not contradict such unity of origin. This is, however, not the case. The considerations advanced by many anatomists on this subject lead, when taken together, really to no other conclusion than that the fragments were derived from one individual. The more I myself have studied these fragments the more firmly I have been convinced of this unity of origin; and at the same time it has become ever clearer to me that they are really parts of a form intermediate between men and apes,
