In March 1868, railway workers clearing away debris from a rock shelter known locally as the Abri de Crô-Magnon (shelter of Crô-Magnon) at Les Eyzies, Dordogne, noticed stone tools and pieces of skeleton imbedded in the dirt. In April Louis Lartet, son of paleontologist Edouard Lartet, began excavating the site, finding numerous animal remains, flint and bone artifacts, and, at the rear of the shelter, five human skeletons—the first early modern humans of the Upper Paleolithic to be discovered. This find became known as Crô-Magnon I.

English translation of this and related papers on Crô-Magnon fossils in Lartet & Christy, Reliquiae Aquitanicae; being contributions to the archaeology and palaeontology of Périgord and the adjoining provinces of southern France. Edited by Thomas Rupert Jones (1875).