28 THE MYSTERIOUS BIPED
ties en o embrace t singular possibilities. At about time t Dubois ting out for Sumatra, a skeleton found in Périgueux lydeclared to be t of an Eskimo. Quite Eskimo France ably explained. It ually an early Cro-Magnon.)It t Dubois began instead used fifty convicts lent by tcies. For a yeartra, transferred to Java. And team, for Dubois ed tes—found a section of ancient rinil skullcap. t of a skull, it s tinctly nonures but a mucAntus (later ceco Pitus) anddeclared it today as us.
t year Dubois’s ually complete t lookedsurprisingly modern. In fact, many ants tis modern, and o do is an erectus bone, it is unlike any oto deduce—correctly, as it turned out—t Pit. a scrap of cranium and one toote skull, we.
In 1895, Dubois returned to Europe, expecting a triumpion. In fact, nearlyte reaction. Most scientists disliked bot manner in of an ape, probably a gibbon, andnot of any early o bolster edanatomist from ty of Strasbourg, Gustav Sco make a cast of the skullcap.
to Dubois’s dismay, Sc received far moresympatic attention tten and folloure tour inered, Dubois o an undistinguision as a professor of geology at ty of Amsterdam and for t to let anyone examine hisprecious fossils again. he died in 1940 an unhappy man.
Mean, tralian-born omy at ty of tersrand in Jo a small butremarkably complete skull of a cact face, a lo—a natural cast of tone quarry on t at a dusty spot called taung. Dart could see at once t taung skull of aus like Dubois’s Java Man,