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  3. The oldest adult human skull yet found belongs to the lowest grade of Homo e

The oldest adult human skull yet found belongs to the lowest grade of Homo e

游客2025-04-26  33
问题     The oldest adult human skull yet found belongs to the lowest grade of Homo erectus, and to the Australoid line. It is known as Pithecanthropus (Ape-Man) Number 4, because it was the fourth of its kind to be found. All four were unearthed in river banks in central Java. Number 4 is about 700,000 years old, and Numbers 1,2, and 3 between 600,000 and 500,000. We know this because tektites--small, glassy nodules from outer space--were found in the same beds as the first three, and the beds containing Number 4 lay underneath the tektite bed, along with the bones of a more ancient group of animals. These tektites have been picked up in large numbers in Java, the Philippines, and Australia, where they all fell in a single celestial shower. Their age--approximately 600,000 years--has been accurately measured in several laboratories by nuclear chemical analysis, through the so-called argon-potassium method.
    Pithecanthropus Number 4 consists of the back part of a skull and its lower face, palate, and upper teeth. As reconstructed by Weidenreich, it is a brutal-looking skull, with heavy crests behind for powerful neck muscle attachments, a large palate, and large teeth, as in apes. The brain size of this skull was about 900 cubic centimeters; modern human brains range from about 1,000 to 2,000 cc with an average of about 1,450 cc. The brains of apes and Australopithecines are about 350 to 650 cc. So Pithecanthropus Number 4 was intermediate in brain size between apes and living men.
    His fragmentary skull was not the only find made in the beds it lay in. Nearby were found the cranial vault of a two-year-old baby, already different from those of living infants, and a piece of chinless adult lower jaw. Two other jaws have been discovered in the same deposits which were much larger than any in the world certainly belonged to a Homo erectus. They are called Meganthropus (Big Man) and may have belonged to a local kind of Australopithecine, but this is not certain, If so, Homo erectus coexisted with, or overlapped, the Anstralopithecines in Java as well as in South Africa, which implies that man did not originate in either place, but somewhere in between. [br] From this passage, we may conclude that Australopithecines are ______.
选项 A、ape-like creatures
B、inhabitants of Australia
C、brutal and powerful
D、smaller than humans
答案 A
解析 根据这篇短文，我们可以断定Australopithecines是像猿一样的动物。在第二段倒数第二句Australopithecines和apes并列，由此可以猜测它的意思与ape(猿)的意思相近。据陆谷孙主编的《英汉大词典》(p.106)，Australopithecine意为“南方古猿”。
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