Peking, Sept. 3.
A claim to have antedated the accepted mammalian age was made by Mr. Roy Chapman' Andrews, leader of the Srd Asiatic Expedition, to a gathering of journalists, whilst he was on a flying visit to Peking recently. The rest of the expedition are still working western Mongolia, and Mr, Andrews has now rejoined' thera, 1g of the progress' made the finding ing link," Mr. Andrews said they had already established trong connexion between the and the mammalian ages, On reaching the point at which they left off two years ago, in the rock Altai out of which ey had excavated the famous ten-million-yeat-old dinosaur eggs, they found six skulls, the wize of walnuts, On their Inst expedition, he a similar skull had been dug out' of the rock, but when examined at the American Museum of Natural History, it was classified the skull of a reptile, a lizard. This had confirmed the classification of the Expedition, But on striving at their base in Mongolia, they recciveed a message from the Museum that the skull" had been definitely established as that of a mamma!
This naturally caused a concentra tion on the rock formation in wh the first was found, the home also of the dinosaur eggs, with the result that six other skulls were dug out, the types being marsupial and multituberculate. "In the history ology." said Mr. Ans only one' mammal ¢kull has been found dating back anywhere near this period of antiquity. This is in the British Museum. The ago of our finds is two or three million years before the generally accepted age of mammals, the Eocene age, Our find belongs to the Cretaceous age before that."
The Expedition had also been successful in discovering truces of the culture of the Asiatic prototype of the Azilian. At the bottom of a large basin they dug into some sand dunes surmounted by tamarisk trees, below which was a rock for-motion containing all kinds of stone implements such as spear points, arrow heads, and drills. These were made of jaspar, churr, and chalee-Jdony. "They represent a stage in human development so far unknown," commented Mr. Andrews, adding, however, that he understood party of Frenchmen, working in ithe Ordos territory, ' had found similar traces of a' culture ever older than that. The question are these finds—Did the European ian culture come from Asia or ice versa? Their geologists calculated that the stone formation waa 10 to 20 thousand years old, whereas the Aailian epoch in Europe dated back only 7,000 years.
Forty more Dinosaur Eggs Mr, Andrews said that ar al bones were also traced in this for-motion, but dust was all that remained. He mazarded that the dune dwellers of Shabrack Ussu/ the venue of the discoveries, were the first to discover the dinosaur eggs, for bits of these shells were found in strings, leading to the assumption that they had been used as necklaces by these primitive folk.
Forty more dinosaur eggs were unearthed, bringing the total number in the possession of the American Museum of Natural History up to 70.
A feature of the present expedition is the mapping of sections of Mongolia which have hitherto remained unexplored by scientife cartographers, ard Mr. Andrews reports that much useful work has been done in this direction, ALTHouGH Hangchow is one of the best known places in China for umbrellas, Gen, Sun Chuan-fang, Tupan: of Chekiang, has purchased" 15,000 umbrellas from a local firm, for the use hig soldiers.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.