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THE COHUNA SKULL.
The extreme antiquity of a skull, un-
earthed at Cohuna, in the Murray Valley,
by Dr. Colin Mackenzie, Director of the
National Museum of Australian Zoology,
has been questioned by many scientists.
Dr. MacKenzie claims that the skull ante-
dates all known human remains, including
the Rhodesian, Piltdown, and Talgai
skulls, by unknown ages. On Friday, the
question was referred to the Elder Pro-
fessor of Anatomy of the Adelaide Univer-
sity (Professor F. Wood Jones), who, on
Thursday, reutrned to Adelaide after a
trip to Europe, and also to America,
where he was invited by the Rockefeller
Institute to study anthropological methods
and institutions. The professor said that
while he was in Melbourne he attended a
meeting of the Melbourne University
Science Association, where Dr. MacKenzie
showed the Cohuna skull. ''Although I
did not have an opportunity of minutely
examining the skull," said Professor Wood
Jones, "I came to the conclusion that
while it was undoubtedly an extremely in-
teresting specimen, the circumstances in
which it was, found do not indicate a high
geological antiquity. The fossilization of
the skull, which causes its finder to be-
lieve it to be of geological antiquity, might
in other localities be taken as an indica-
tion of age, but in the neighbourhood of
the Murray, mineralization, has been
known to take place in quite recent speci-
mens. As for the physical characteristics
ot the Cohuna skull itself, I imagine it is
extremely like the Talgai skull before that
skull was crushed, and that like the Tal
gai skull, It must be considered as defi-
nitely the skull of an Australian aborigine
of certainly a very primitive type. It
cannot, however, be regarded as a skull
which is ancestral to other races of
humanity,"
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