From the January 4, 1930, issue
PILTDOWN MAN EARLIEST HUMAN
BEING
The ape-man of Darwin was read out of
man’s family tree and the dawn-man of
Sussex, older than 1,250,000 years, was
elevated to the position of man’s progenitor
by Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn, president of
the American Museum of Natural History,
New York.
A new picture was painted by Dr. Osborn of
the earliest known creature who can be
called human.
His size of brain was equal to the minimum of that of the living Veddahs,
Papuans, and native Australians, the most primitive living men. He
skillfully made implements and weapons of flint and bone and for killing
animals perfected a slingstone. He lived contemporaneously with a very
primitive species of elephant whose remains are found from India to
Africa to England and he hunted this beast for its flesh, bone, and ivory.
He had deft hands and fingers guided by an imaginative and intelligent
forebrain. He was a nomad and long and agile lower limbs were his only
means of distant transportation. He was a dweller of the open plains, not
of “warm, forest-clad land” as was Darwin’s “hypothetical ape” human
ancestor. He lived near the end of the geological period of time known as
the Tertiary, in the epoch called the upper Pliocene, which was certainly
more than one and a quarter million years ago.
MYSTERY OF THE B STARS EXPLAINED
Rotation of the galaxy–the system of stars of which the sun, the Milky
Way and all the visible stars are part–around a distant and massive
center, helps explain the peculiar motions of the bluish-white stars
classified as type B. This announcement was made by Dr. J.S. Plaskett,
director of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory at Victoria, B.C.
Dr. Plaskett explained that the stars of type B, which are classified by
the lines that appear in their spectra when their light is analyzed, all are
moving from or towards the sun with much smaller speed than any other
spectral type. But the curious fact has been found that most are moving
from the sun, as if the whole system of these stars was expanding
around the sun as a center. The average speed away from us is about
five kilometers (3.1 miles) per second.
Though various suggestions have been made to account for this
anomaly, such as errors of measurement, Dr. Plaskett has found that
most of them agree with what would be caused by a rotation of the whole
stellar system.
BACTERIOPHAGE PROBABLY NOT ORGANISM
“A systematic study of the properties of bacteriophage failed to
substantiate its living nature,” says Dr. J. Bronfenbrenner, professor of
bacteriology at the Washington University School of Medicine. The
evidence seems to indicate that the bacteriophage is an inanimate
chemical product of bacterial metabolism, having no cell-dissolving
properties of its own, Dr. Bronfenbrenner said.
Bacteriophage has been hailed as a most potent germ-killer, being made
itself from germs, but ever since its discovery by Dr. F. d’Herelle it has
been a subject of scientific controversy.