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As far as the atlas was concerned, Ameghino and others thought it displayed some primitive features, but extensive analysis by Hrdlicka (1912, p. 364) led him to conclude: “The bone is submedium in size and rather massive, but is in every respect human. An extensive comparison with human and other mammalian atlases settles its human provenience beyond question. It is more or less distant morphologically from the atlases of all the anthropoid apes and still more so from those of the monkeys, while the atlases of the Carnivora and other mammals present such differences that a comparison becomes entirely super-fluous.” It is fairly obvious what Hrdlicka was trying to do. Ameghino had pointed to primitive features in the atlas, with a view toward attributing it to a precursor of the modern human race, a species that lived in Argentina during the Early Miocene (the Early Pliocene according to modern estimates). For Hrdlicka, it was sufficient to show that the bone was completely modern in character. Hrdlicka was an evolutionist and believed the laws of biological development required that the human form should, as we proceed back in time, become more and more primitive. If the bone was of the fully modern human type, then no matter what layer it was found in, it had to be of recent origin. There was no doubt about it. Such a bone’s presence in an ancient stratum always could be, indeed had to be, explained as some kind of intrusion.

Along these lines, Hrdlicka (1912, p. 384) wrote about the atlas: “Its extraction is problematical, but even if found in quite intimate relation with the real Monte Hermosean loess, it is not necessarily old. It may well have been derived from the dune above the Monte Hermoso barrancas, which, as shown before, contain numerous traces of the modern native of the coast, and which fall from the crumbling edge above the ledges into pockets of the lower ancient formation.” But there is another possible explanation: human beings of the modern physiological type were living over 3 million years ago in Argentina. This is supported by the fact that the atlas showed signs of having been thoroughly embedded in sediments from the Montehermosan formation.

All in all, Hrdlicka (1912, p. 384) felt that the Monte Hermoso atlas was worthy of being “dropped of necessity into obscurity.” That is exactly what happened. The atlas was dropped into obscurity. It had to be done. Otherwise, Hrdlicka’s claim that humans only recently entered the Americas would have been placed on very shaky ground. Certainly there are many who will insist that the Monte Hermoso atlas remain in the obscurity into which it was of necessity dropped. Evidence for a fully human presence 3 million or more years ago, in Argentina of all places, is still not welcome in mainstream paleoanthropology.

6.2.5 A Jaw Fragment from Miramar, argentina (late Pliocene)

Early in the twentieth century, fossil human skeletal remains were found in the Late Pliocene Chapadmalalan formation at Miramar, Argentina. Previously, stone tools and a mammalian bone with an arrow head embedded in it had been discovered at this site (Section 5.2). Hugo Obermaier (1924, p. 306) wrote: “in 1921 M. A. Vignati discovered further human remains at Miramar, not far from Buenos Aires, consisting of a fragment of lower jaw with two molars still in it. According to Vignati it came from the geologic formation of Chapalmalal.” We have not been able to locate Vignati’s original report on this find, potentially an important paleoanthropological discovery. But we have found a report about the jaw fragment by another South American scientist, E. Boman.

Boman (1921, pp. 341-342) stated: “From the publication of my article in the Journal de la Société des Americanistes de Paris up to the time of my visit to Miramar last year, some other objects have been discovered there. Those that have attracted the most attention are two human lower molars (2nd and 3rd right), which were