SCIENTISTS DIFFER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18748, 29 December 1922, Page 10

SCIENTISTS DIFFER

ANCIENT TOOTH FOUND. PREHISTORIC MAN OR BEAR? At a scientific meeting of the Zoological Society in London, Professor Elliot Smith exhibited photographs and a cast, recently received Irom America, of what is now « famous fossil tooth. As Professor Elliot Smith stated last May, the specimen was found by Mr Harold J. Cook in beds of Pliocene ago in Nebraska, where other »e----mains of extinct mammals, some apparently with Asiatic affinities, have been discovered. After taking the opinion of various American experts, Professor H. F. Osborn, the loading paleontologist of America, identified it as a second upper molar of a creature certainly belonging to the group of Primates, but neither an orang, gorilla, chimpanzee, nor any known race of extinct man or manlike ape. If this identification be accepted, then, for tho time being, America can lay claim to have been tho home of the oldest ape-liko man, or man-liko ape, yet discovered. Dr Arthur Smith Woodward, keeper of geology at the British Museum of Natural History, however, has already stated his doubts of the interpretation, holding that the tooth showed a close resemblance with the last lower molar of extinct primitive bears belonging to the genus Hyaenarctos, creatures of which fossil remains, although unfortunately not including a last lower molar, had already been discovered in American Pliocene beds. Professor Elliot Smith fully admitted the unexpectedness of finding a large primate m the lower pliocene of America representing a type of the human race older titan pithecanthropus, tho fossil man of Java. But on going through the characters of the tooth one by one, and, above all, on examining photographs taken by X-rays, which showed the configuration of the pulp cavity, ho was disposed to agree that it made known to us the existence of a primate, in some respects like the chimpanzee, but definitely human rather than ape-like. ur Smith Woodward adhered to his opinion that it was more likely to belong to tho known genera of extinct bears than to an unknown primate in a continent which had not yet yielded any remains of such creatures. He might have been wrong in thinking it a molar from the lower jaw, but ho'claimed that it was much more like ...e upper molar of .a carnivore than of a primate. ____________