prominence of the brow-ridges, the small backward extent of the origin of the temporal muscles, and the reduction of the mastoid processes, suggest that the specimen belongs to a female individual, and it may be regarded as representing a hitherto unknown genus and species, for which a new name is proposed.
"The authors conclude that the Piltdown gravel-bed is of the same age as the contained Chellean implements, which are not so much water-worn as most of the associated flints. The rolled fragments of molars of the Pliocene elephant and Mastodon are considered to have been derived with the flints from older gravels; while the other mammalian remains and the human skull and mandible, which cannot have been transported far by water, must be assigned to the period of the deposition of the gravel-bed itself. The remoteness of that period is indicated by the subsequent deepening of the valley of the Ouse to the amount of eighty feet."
The above conclusion seems to the present writer the most rational deduction from the facts, notwithstanding that the discussion elicited a conflict of opinion—some regarding the skull as belonging to the same age as the mammalian remains, which were admittedly Pliocene. As an undoubted human fossil of the River Drift period in Britain, the importance of the Piltdown skeleton, as a link in the evolution of humanity, cannot be over-rated (see Chap. IV, p. 70).
No other researches within the British area
