The 1923 Skull And The Controversy It Created
Understanding why the Punín-2 skull and its reconstruction matter requires going back to 1923 and to the skull that came before it: Punín-1.
The American Museum of Natural History expedition that found Punín-1 in 1923 was part of the wave of scientific exploration that characterized the early twentieth century, when natural history museums in North America and Europe were actively sending expeditions to collect specimens — geological, biological, and anthropological — from across the world. The Chimborazo region of Ecuador was a target of such exploration because of the fossils known to occur there: remains of Pleistocene megafauna, the giant animals that had populated the Americas during the Ice Age.
The specific ravine near Punín was known to contain fossils of animals from the Pleistocene epoch — the geological period that began approximately 2.6 million years ago and ended roughly 11,700 years ago, with the end of the last Ice Age. Mastodons and giant ground sloths had been found in sediment layers in this ravine, and the expedition was interested in these animals and the geological context of their remains.