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round hole at the place of its greatest width. According to Ferretti, the hole in the bone was not the work of molluscs or crustaceans. The next year Ferretti showed to the Committee another bone bearing traces of human work. It was found in blue Pliocene clay, of Astian age, at San Ruffino. This bone appeared to have been partially sawn through at one end, and then broken. De Mortillet, who included the above-mentioned information in his book, stated (1883, p. 77) that he had not seen the bones nor heard any further discussion about them. This indicated to him that they had not been (and thus should not be) taken seriously. It would perhaps have been more appropriate, and scientific, for de Mortillet to have inspected the bones before concluding they were of little scientific value. Many modern scientists react in a similar fashion when confronted with unfamiliar, little-discussed anomalous evidence. They assume it is not of any importance; otherwise they would have seen it discussed in the published works of scientists committed to the established views.

At a scientific conference held in 1880, G. Bellucci, of the Italian Society for Anthropology and Geography, called attention to recent discoveries in San Valentino and Castello delle Forme, near Perugia. Found there were bones of different animals bearing incisions, both straight and intersecting, and with imprints probably made with rocks employed for the purpose of breaking the bones. Bellucci said there were also two specimens of carbonized bones, and finally flint flakes. All were recovered from lacustrine Pliocene clays, characterized by a fauna like that of the classic Val d’Arno. According to Bellucci, these objects proved the existence of man in the Tertiary period in Umbria (Bellucci and Capellini 1884).

2.14 Clermont-Ferrand, France (Middle Miocene)

Turning once more to France, we note that in the late nineteenth century the museum of natural history at Clermont-Ferrand had in its collection a femur of Rhinoceros paradoxus with grooves on its surface. The specimen was found in a freshwater limestone at Gannat, in a quarry said to be dated by fossils to the Mayencian age of the Middle Miocene (de Mortillet 1883, p. 52). M. Pomel presented this piece to the anthropological section of the French Association for the Advancement of Science meeting of 1876 in Clermont. Pomel said the marks were from carnivores, which were numerous in the French Middle Miocene. But de Mortillet disagreed that an animal could have been responsible. He pointed out that the grooves on the Miocene rhinoceros femur could not have been made by a rodent, because rodent incisors usually leave pairs of parallel marks. The grooves on the rhinoceros femur were not arranged in pairs. De Mortillet also believed that the marks were not caused by larger carnivores, because, as noted by Binford (1981, p. 169) in modern times, carnivore teeth leave many irregular impressions and cause distinctive patterns of bone destruction. Binford stated that “association of scoring with patterns of destruction is not expected when man dismembers an animal with tools.” According to this standard, the Miocene rhinoceros femur, which displayed scoring but no pattern of destruction, might very well have been cut by ancient humans using stone tools.

For de Mortillet, however, the marks were a purely geological phenomenon. He concluded that the grooves on the rhinoceros femur of ClermontFerrand were probably produced by the same subterranean pressures responsible for the marks on the Billy specimen (de Mortillet 1883, p. 52). But de Mortillet’s own description (1883, p. 52) of the markings on the bone leaves this interpretation open to question: “The impressions occupy a portion of the inner surface near the condyles. They are parallel grooves, somewhat irregular, transverse to the axis of the bone.” The condyles are the rounded prominences on the articulator, or joint, surfaces at the end of the femur, or thighbone. The orientation and position of the marks on the fossil were identical to those of incisions