DESCENT OF MAN

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4566, 8 November 1937, Page 6

DESCENT OF MAN

DISCOVERIES IN MONTANA. Scattered remains of the earliest known members of the order of life to which modern man belongs have been discovered in Central Montana by three scientists who in succession spent nearly thirty years exploring a wooded paradise of 70,000,000 years ago, according to a report issued by the Smithsonian Institution, says the “New York Times.”

Only teeth and jaws of these creatures have been found and only a paleontologist, the report says, could recognise their relationship to the monkey, apes, and humans of to-day. Tiny creatures, hardly larger than mice, they lived in trees of the ancient forest region just east of the Crazy Mountains, according to Dr. George Gaylord Simpson of the American Museum of Natural History, author of the report.

No claim is made that the little animals were in the direct ancestral line of present-day primates. It is believed that they were offshoots of an earlier general and still unknown stock from which man also derived.

The branch of life in question apparently became extinct after the Paleocene age, and signs indicate that, many were devoured by large crocodile-like reptiles which were the dominant creatures of their period. The explorations were begun in 1908 by Albret C. Silberling of the United States Geological Survey, and a large collection of varied specimens was made. Investigation was continued by the late James W. Gidley of the National Museum staff and continued after his death in 1931 by Dr. Simpson. Dr. Simpson’s report is based largely on the extensive Smithsonian collection of the fossils from the Crazy Mountain area. Although only four or five semicomplete skulls and no complete skeleton exists in the collection, Dr. Simpson states that one of the types discovered seems to combine various fundamental features of the pseudomonkeys, the lemurs and tarisoids, the latter now represented only in the East Indian tarsius.

The report discloses the discovery bears and to such insectivores of today as shrews and rubles, as well as discovery of probably the earliest beginnings of the family now represented by horses, cattle, deer, and bison. In the earliest strata of the Crazy Mountain formation, according to the report, are found fragments of animals at least 50,000,000 years old and entirely different from any known today. These are the multi-tuberculates which at one time constituted the most abundant form of animal life. The collection from this area includes the finest single multi-tubercu-late specimen yet discovered, the report states, skull, jaws, and partial skeleton of one of the small rodentlike animals.