Yuanmou Man
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| Homo erectus yuanmouensis |
Yuanmou Man (元谋人), Homo erectus yuanmouensis, refers to an ancestral human whose remnants, two teeth, were discovered on May 1, 1965 near Danawu Village in Yuanmou County (元谋县; pinyin: Yuánmóu Xiàn), Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture, in China's southwestern province of Yunnan. Tools were found in the vicinity of the fossils.
It is initially estimated that the fossils were about 1.7 million years old, and thus represented the oldest fossils of human ancestors in China and East Asia.[1] However this hypothesis has been questioned. Pope indicates that evidence does not support the appearance of hominidae in Asia prior to 1 million years.[2] The strata at Yuanmou were found to be complex and inverted and recalculations of the age would put the age of the Yuanmou man into the Middle Pleistocene, that is about 500,000 - 600,000 years ago.[3]
Yuanmou Man thus appears to have existed as a "contemporary" to Lantian Man and Peking Man who also have been found in China. All are attributed to the species Homo erectus.
The fossils are on display at the National Museum of China, Beijing.
[edit] References
- ^ Pu L, Fang C, Hsing-hua M, Ching-yu P, Li-Sheng H, Shih-chiang C. Preliminary study on the age of Yuanmou man by palaeomagnetic technique. Sci Sin. 1977 Sep-Oct;20(5):645-64. PMID 339347
- ^ Geoffrey G. Pope. Evidence on the Age of the Asian Hominidae. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (1983) 80:4988-92.[1]
- ^ Inverted strata
