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Peking Man (Homo erectus pekinensis) is a subspecies of H. erectus which inhabited what is now northern China during the Middle Pleistocene.Its fossils have been found in a cave some 50 km (31 mi) southwest of Beijing (then referred to in the West as Peking), known as the Zhoukoudian Peking Man Site.
Zhoukoudian Peking Man Site (周口店北京人遗址), also romanized as Choukoutien, is a cave system in suburban Fangshan District, Beijing.It has yielded many archaeological discoveries, including one of the first specimens of Homo erectus (Homo erectus pekinensis), dubbed Peking Man, and a fine assemblage of bones of the giant short-faced hyena Pachycrocuta brevirostris.
Of the four species placed within the genus Sinanthropus, the first to be found were remnants of the Peking man (Sinanthropus pekinensis).The first fossil was retrieved by Otto Zdansky (1894-1988) near the village of Chou K'ou-tien (China) after the Swedish Geologist and Archaeologist Johan Gunnar Andersson (1874-1960) and his colleagues instigated the excavations at the beginning of the 1920's.
Fossils representing 40 Homo erectus individuals, known as Peking Man, were found near Beijing at Zhoukoudian that date to about 400,000 years ago. The species was believed to have lived for at least several hundred thousand years in China, [ 3 ] and possibly until 200,000 years ago in Indonesia.
The list of fossils begins with Graecopithecus, dated some 7.2 million years ago, which may or may not still be ancestral to both the human and the chimpanzee lineage. For the earlier history of the human lineage, see Timeline of human evolution#Hominidae , Hominidae#Phylogeny .
Older fossils lay even deeper beneath the bone bed. These 8.9-million-year-old rocks included fossilized bones of fish and marine mammals. Experts also found teeth from juvenile megalodons and ...
The exhibition belonging to the Shu-hua Museum details the origins of man in China. Multiple casts of the skulls of early hominidae, which were discovered in Zhoukoudian, are displayed. A bronze bust of Peking Man is also on display. A small diorama of Homo erectus making fire is installed in a glass case.
Scientists have unearthed in southeastern China the fossil of a quail-sized bird that lived about 150 million years ago during the Jurassic Period and possessed surprisingly modern traits, a ...