The Piltdown Horse “Grinder”

Abstract

IN the Dawson-Woodward paper on the Piltdown skull of a “hominid” (Q.J.G.S., vol. lxix.) mention is made of a tooth of Equus, and an accurate description (so far as it goes) is given. After handling it again at Kensington, and comparing it by measurements with recent finds from this Stort Valley, also with one recently placed in the Sedgwick Museum, and another in the Saffron Walden Museum, I have found that the tooth in question appears to be the fourth premolar (p.m. 4) of Equus robustus, which Prof. Cossar Ewart has recognised as the true “Solutre Horse” (“Restoration of an Ancient Race of British Horses”, Proc. Roy. Soc., Edin., vol. xxx., part 4). The importance of this identification (if it is confirmed by experts) is too obvious to need further comment to those who are familiar with recent advances in our knowledge of the prehistoric horse. It remains to determine the exact horizon in the gravel-deposit at which this tooth was found before we can appraise its precise value as a time-index (see NATURE, July 8, 1909, paper to the Royal Soc. by Prof. J. C. Ewart, F.R.S.). But one may venture to assert that the stratum of Piltdown gravel, from which this tooth of Equus came, is of far later date than anything belonging to the Pleiocene.