Abstract
FOR several years Dr. Wilhelm Freudenberg has collected fossils from the sand-pits in the Pleistocene river deposits near Heidelberg, from which the lower jaw of Hom heidelbergensis was obtained. We now learn, from a communication which he has made to Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, that among the mammalian remains which he has discovered there are no less than eighteen fragments of fossil man and apes. The tibia ascribed to Heidelberg man is short and very stout, with an inward twist, and in many ways like that of a big gorilla. A fragment of a femur is also very gorilla-like. The second metatarsal is curved as in a chimpanzee, and the first metacarpal is twice as large as that of a modern man. These remains are associated with Elephas antiquus. Other fragments found not with this elephant, but with E. trogontherii, belong to a Primate about as large as an orang. There is a sagittal crest on the parietal bone, and a piece of lower. jaw resembles that of Sivapithecus rather than Dryopithecus. The pelvis shows several features of that of a chimpanzee, and the femur and tibia are slender. Other fragments of the same age belong to two smaller Primates related to the gibbons. They seem to have had comparatively small canine teeth. In association with them, one long and remarkably human femur, an apparently human pubis, and a human navicular bone, are considered by Dr. Freudenberg to belong to a forerunner of Neanderthal man. In the upper beds, with Rhinoceros etruscus, were also found implements of quartzite, charcoal, and burnt fragments of bone.
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News and Views. Nature 120, 961–964 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/120961a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/120961a0