An account of the discovery and characters of a human skeleton found beneath a stratum of chalky boulder clay near Ipswich / by J. Reid Moir and Arthur Keith.

  • Moir, J. Reid (James Reid), 1879-1944.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: An account of the discovery and characters of a human skeleton found beneath a stratum of chalky boulder clay near Ipswich / by J. Reid Moir and Arthur Keith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    the posterior pole of the cranial cast (see Fig. 6). If I have made an error in fixing that point too much to the left, then the result would be to alter the position of the maximum width of the skull. I do not think an error has been made and believe that the posterior position of maximum diameter is an intrinsic character of the skull. In the drawing showing a coronal section of the skull (Fig. 5) the maximum transverse diameter is seen to be situated between 40 and 50 mm. above the ear holes; in typical Neanderthal crania it is situated much lower down. Thus as regards maximum length (192 mm.) and maximum width (144 mm.) the Ipswich skull agrees very closely with cranial forms abundantly represented now in England. The proportion of width to length is 75 per cent. In estimating the height of the skull certain difficulties are met. Tlie median vault of the skull, on each side of the longitudinal sinus, has disappeared from a point in front of the bregma to the region of the inion. Unfortunately, too, the part of the cranial cast which occupies the highest part of the vault (see Figs. 4 and G) is _BR F G M A So 70 SO 50. 40 30 20 \0 Q. I®. 20 30 40 50 60 70 So. FIG. 5.—FULL-FACE DRAWIXG OF THE SKULL ORIENTED AS IN FIG. 8. (Scale of reduction is indicated.) missing. Still the vault of the skull can be restored to approximately its original form. The contour of the frontal-parietal bones and the coronal suture of the left side guide one to the position of the bregma (see Figs. 4 and 5); this is situated 90 mm. above the plane (sub-cerebral)^ on which the skull is oriented in Fig. 4; it * Sub-cerebral plane. See Keith, Jour. Anat. and Physiol., 1910, vol. xliv, p. 251. u 2