THE COHANA SKULL

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 136, 9 June 1926, Page 9

THE COHANA SKULL

AUSTRALIA'S EARLIEST MAN

OPINION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS.

{United Press Association.—Copyright.) (Australian-New Zealand Cable Asm.) (Received' 9th June, noon.)

NEW YOKK, Bth June. Dr. Franz Boas, Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, commenting on the Cohana skull, found in Australia, said: "Professor MacKenzie 's claims are not impossible, but it is unlikely that the type of mammal fauna found in Australia is exceedingly ancient; yet none of the forms to which man is more closely related seem to be there. "We should, therefore, hardly anticipate. finding the earliest forms of man in Australia. Asia still seems the more likely field."

Dr. William Gregory, Curator of Comparative and Human Anatomy in the American Museum of Natural History, who is particularly familiar with the Australian conditions, due to study there, said: "Primitive characteristics of the skull are not necessary to indicate great age. The depth and the fact that the skull was found in close proximity with two modern aboriginal skulls has no great bearing on the matter. I note that, although it is impossible to accept the claim of logical antiquity, the Cohana skull has a strong resemblance to the Talgai skull. Australian scientists, including Professor MacKenzie, are more than competent, however, to settle the question of the skull's antiquity. There are few countries able to present so ty-illiant a t group of scientific men as Australia. The evidence is there, and they most certainly find

Regarding the reported recent discovery by Professor MacKenzio at Cohana, near the Murray River, of a skull ante-dating any known human remains, said a London message of 21st April last, Dr. Grafton ElliotkSmith s id that the final judgment depended on evideneo provided .by Professor MacKenzie, but he was not inclined to think that there wag the remotest possibility of anything found in Australia being as old as the Piltdown skulL The Piltdown Man was living in Europe hundreds of thousands of years before humans could have reached Australia. It seemed incredible that anything approaching the age of Piltdown Man could be found in Australia, where the oldest remains were probably not more than 4000 or 5000 years old. Professor MaeKenzio was Mghl7 competent, but at the same time this wa3 rather a large order to swallow. At the meeting of the British Association in Sydney in 1914, Professors J. T. Wilson and T. W. David exhibited the fossilised skull of a boy of about 15 years of age, picked up at Talgai, Queensland, thirty years before. The peculiarity of this skull, was the exception ' size of the palate and teeth, and especially of the large and salient canino teeth.