• DOI:10.1086/200664
• Corpus ID: 143896540

The Skull of Lantian Man

@article{JuKang1966TheSO,
  title={The Skull of Lantian Man},
  author={Woo Ju-Kang},
  journal={Current Anthropology},
  year={1966},
  volume={7},
  pages={83 - 86}
}

• Woo Ju-Kang
• Published 1 February 1966
• Environmental Science, Geography
• Current Anthropology

Vo. . .... .o . .......uary 196 In the summer of 1963, scientists of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered the well-preserved mandible of an ape-man in the neighbourhood of Chenchiawo Village in Lantian County, Shensi Province, while conducting a stratigraphical survey of the Cenozoic Era and searching for vertebrate fossils. This added another site to that of Choukoutien where ape-man fossils have been found in China, (CA 5:2, pp. 98-101). Announcement of this important discovery immediately aroused the close attention of scientific and other interested groups both at home and abroad. Early in 1964 a survey team was organized on a much larger scale. It went on to conduct more extensive studies and excavations in Lantian County here, at the end of May, a tooth fossil of an ape-man was unearthed in the foothills of the northern slope of the Chinling Mountains at about 80 metres elevation on Kungwangling Hill at a site where many other fossils had already been found. Later, in October, the skull of an ape-man was discovered in the course of examining a large block of fossilbearing deposits which had been packed up and sent to Peking. Parts of the skull found intact after careful preparation included the frontal bone, the parietal bones, the right temporal bone, the greater part of the orbits (eye sockets), partial remains of the nasal bones, and most of the right maxilla with 2 teeth still attached to it and a portion of the left one. These, together with the tooth excavated earlier in May, were identified as belonging to the same individual. Numerous fossils of mammals were found with the skull. Studies of the fossils of extinct animals and of the stratigraphical sequence of the layer in which the ape-man's skull was found, led to the preliminary conclusion that the stratum which con-