3 MARCH 1923, Page 3

Dr. Wolf's reported discovery in Patagonia of a fossilized human

skull, said to be of the tertiary -period, will apparently once more nullify all previous scientific calculations as to the antiquity of man. Every few years some startling discovery is made which upsets all well-established anthropological foundations. We are now beginning 'to be sceptical as to how much cause there really is for mental disturbance. Does it betray an ignorance too extreme to merit instruction to suggest that some natural earth-displacement might have caused the skull to slip and become fossilized in a soil to which it had no anthropological rights ? After all, the only clue 'to the age of man which the anthropologists possess is the nature of-the soil in which they find skulls or other human hones.