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Preliminary Note on the Discovery of Fossil Man at Tepexpan in the Valley of Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Helmut De Terra
Helmut De Terra*
Affiliation:
Mexico, D.F.
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Extract

My Geological and archaeological studies in the Valley of Mexico, which I have carried out since the end of 1945 under the auspices and with the aid of the Viking Fund, Inc. of New York, were rewarded on February 22 of this year (1947) by an extraordinary find of human skeletal remains in the Upper Pleistocene Bercerra formation at Tepexpan, in the State of Mexico. So far the quest for genuine fossil human remains in North America has been a tantalizing venture because of the incomplete state of preservation and the uncertainty of dating. In this respect the Tepexpan find would seem to meet many of the requirements necessary for assigning it to a known geological formation dating back to the close of the Ice Age. Moreover, the formation in which the human fossil was excavated has yielded at several other localities artifacts which must be regarded as more or less contemporary.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , July 1947 , pp. 40 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1947

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References

1 Up to the time of writing (March, 1947) the site has has been visited by Dr. Alf6nso Caso, Eduardo Noguera, I. Marquina, Dr. Rubin F. de la Borbolla, Ing. R. Manges Lopez, Ing. Teodoro Flores, Dr. I. Romero, Dr. Clarence Ross, and C. Fries of the U. S. Geological Survey, Dr. F. Weidenreich, Dr. Gordon T. Ekholm, Dr. Henry Field, Professor Cornelius Osgood, and Dr. Dale T. Stewart.

2 Kirk Bryan, “Datos geológicos sobre la antiguedad del hombre en la Cuenca de Mexico,” Memorias del Segundo Congreso Mexicana de Ciencias Societies, Tomo 5, Mexico, 1946.

3 Helmut de Terra, “New Evidence for the Antiquity of Early Man in Mexico,” Revista Mexicana de Estudios AnlropoUpcos, Vol. 8, pp. 69–88, Mexico, D.F., 1947.