DISCOVERY OF THE "PEKING MAN" AND INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC COOPERATION

On October 16, 1927 Dr. Birger Bohlin, a Swedish paleontologist, recovered at Zhoukoudian in Fangshan County a hominid lower molar tooth, the first tooth of the Peking Man to have been identified on spot in the field. The late Prof. Davidson Black, a Canadian anatomist and anthropologist, made a detailed study of the tooth, together with two teeth excavated previously from the same site by the Austrian paleontologist, Otto Zdansky during the field season of 1921 and 1923. The result of the study was published in the same year of 1927, as a fascicle in volume Ⅶ of the monographic series Palaeontologica Sinica. It was in this article that the first Chinese Ape-Man was christianized as "Sinanthropus pekinensis", coauthored by Black and Zdansky,with Bohlin’s lower molar as its type specimen.