Fig. 21.—The Pariasaurus Baini.
This skeleton was found in the
Permian Strata of South Africa.
“Thus comparative anatomy proves to the satisfaction of every unprejudiced and critical student the significant fact that the body of man and that of the anthropoid ape are not only peculiarly similar, but they are practically one and the same in every important respect. The same two hundred bones, in the same order and structure, make up our inner skeleton; the same three hundred muscles effect our movements; the same hair clothes our skin; the same groups of ganglionic cells build up the marvellous structure of our brain; the same four-chambered heart is the central pulsometer in our circulation; the same thirty-two teeth are set in the same order in our jaws; the same salivary, hepatic, and gastric glands compass our digestive process; the same reproductive organs insure the maintenance of our race.”
Like human beings, these apes stand from three to six feet tall; like human beings, they weigh from one hundred to three hundred pounds; like human beings, they have only a rudimentary tail of from three to five joints imbedded at the extremity of the spine; like human beings, they stand on their hind legs and grasp things with their hands; like human beings, they live in families; like human beings, they are brave, quarrelsome, impulsive, emotional, and capable of a limited exercise of reason.
In their native forests, apes laugh, sing, dance, and converse with one another. Their language is a series of sounds with definite meanings.
Fig. 22.—The Ring-tailed Lemur of Madagascar.
Yet it is not held that man has descended from any of these existing anthropoid apes. What is held is that these creatures and human beings represent two different lines of development from the same ancestors.
But what of the “missing link” between the early ape-like creatures and primitive man? In 1891, Dr. Eugene Dubois, a Dutch military physician, found near Trinil, in Java, some interesting bones and some teeth. The International Zoological Congress, held at Leyden in 1894, voted that these bones had belonged to a form intermediary between ape-like creatures and men. The creature was named the Pithecanthropus Erectus—the erect ape-man.