Anthropopithecus

Ainsi, par le seul raisonnement, solidement appuyé sur des observations précises, nous sommes arrivés à découvrir d’une manière certaine un être intermédiaire entre les anthropoïdes actuels et l’homme.

[4]We are therefore forced to admit, as a consequence of a logical deduction drawn from the direct observation of the facts, that intelligent animals who knew how to make fire and cut stones in the Tertiary Period, were not men in the geological and paleontological sense of the word, but animals of another kind, precursors of Man in the chain of beings, precursors to whom I gave the name Anthropopithecus.

Thus, by reasoning alone, firmly supported by precise observations, we have come to discover with certainty a being intermediate between the present anthropoids and Man.When in 1905 the French paleontologist, paleoanthropologist and geologist Marcellin Boule (1861–1942) published a paper demonstrating that the eoliths were in fact geofacts produced by natural phenomena (freezing, pressure, fire), the argument proposed by De Mortillet fell into disrepute and his definition of the term Anthropopithecus was dropped.

However, a year later, in 1893, Dubois considered that some anatomical characters proper to humans made necessary the attribution of these remains to a genus different than Anthropopithecus and he renamed the specimen of Java with the name Pithecanthropus erectus (1893 paper, published in 1894).

Un vrai singe, excellent militaire, d’ailleurs, malgré sa tournure simiesque.He slept well, did General MacKackmale, with both eyes shut, though longer than was permitted by regulations.

With his long arms, his round eyes deeply set under their beetling brows, his face embellished with a stubbly beard, his grimaces, his semi-human gestures,[note 2] the extraordinary jutting-out of his jaw, he was remarkably ugly, even for an English general.