Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/475

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THE FOSSIL MAN OF LANSING, KANSAS.
469

about twenty feet, and the elevation of the terrace or knoll, between the tunnel and river bank, is about ten feet greater.

The present course of the Missouri River is at the opposite side of the flood plain a mile or more distant. Until within a few years, however, the river flowed within a few hundred yards of the entrance of the cave. In 1881, the year of the highest water known in the river at this place since 18-14, the water reached to within about seventy-five feet of the cave entrance, and to within twelve and a half feet of the

View in the Mouth of the Tributary Valley looking out upon the Missouri Bottoms and showing the Entrance to the Tunnel at the Extreme Right. From a photograph by Professor Chamberlin.

horizon of the skeleton, as determined from Mr. Martin Concannon's testimony.

The bones discovered in the excavation belong to two different skeletons. One of these skeletons is represented by a single bone, the left upper maxilla, belonging to a child about nine years of age, as determined by the teeth, of which the permanent incisors and first molar were fully erupted, while the deciduous molars were much worn. This bone was found about sixty feet from the entrance of the cave,