Age of the South African Ape-men

Abstract

THE determination of the age of mammalian fossils of the later Tertiaries is a matter of the greatest difficulty. In America, Pliocene land beds are rather rare, and except in Europe where we can divide the Pleistocene by its Ice Ages, the classification of the Pleistocene is also very difficult. We have had many different views of the ages of the Siwalik deposits by Falconer, Lydekker, Pilgrim and Matthew. In South Africa we are in much greater difficulty as the majority of our mammalian fossils are not nearly related to those of Europe or Asia, and are even less related to those of America.