Chapter XIX: Munsee Crania: Mastoids

--------------------+--------------+---------------
| 10 males | 12 females
+-----+--------+-----+---------
|Cases|Per cent|Cases|Per cent
--------------------+-----+--------+-----+---------
Large (masculine) | 1 | 10 | — | —
Medium (masculine) | 6 | 60 | 1 | 8
Submedium (feminine)| 3 | 30 | 11 | 92
--------------------+-----+--------+-----+---------

In one of the females (no. 285,309) the apex of the left mastoid is bifid. Well developed cases of this anomaly are rare; there are only three or four other Indian crania in the large collections of the United States National Museum in which it is well represented. In another female specimen (no. 285,304) the right mastoid shows a peculiar, marked indentation in the middle of its dorsal surface, with a groove extending therefrom upward and backward and downward and backward.

SUPRAORBITAL RIDGES

These ridges, as is well known, are sexual characteristics in the main; phylogenetically they are the remains of the pronounced supraorbital arches of man’s anthropoid ancestors and of early man. Like the mastoids they show also considerable individual variation in each sex among the Indians, owing to which they occasionally fail to afford aid in the determination of the sex of the specimen. As a rule they are limited in Indians to the median half to two-thirds of the supraorbital space. In the Munsee skulls at hand they are markedly developed in only one of the males; in two of the male skulls they are small, feminine like, while in two of the female skulls they are so developed as to approximate the supraorbital ridges of the average male.

MALE MUNSEE SKULL, NO. 285,308, U.S.N.M. (VIEW FROM ABOVE)]