Atlantis Online
March 29, 2024, 10:13:21 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Scientists to drill beneath oceans
http://atlantisonline.smfforfree2.com/index.php/topic,8063.0.html
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

King Kong, Gigantopithecus & the Missing Link

Pages: [1] 2   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: King Kong, Gigantopithecus & the Missing Link  (Read 4345 times)
0 Members and 66 Guests are viewing this topic.
Stacy Dohm
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4566



« on: February 11, 2007, 03:01:10 pm »

The Ape That Was

Asian fossils reveal humanity's giant cousin


by Russell L. Ciochon

        For thousands of years, Chinese pharmacists have used fossils - which they call dragon teeth and dragon bones - as ingredients in potions intended to cure ailments ranging from backache to sexual impotence. The fossil-rich caves of southern China have been, and still are, sedulously mined by farmers, who sell these medicinal treasures to apothecaries in the cities. In just such a pharmacy, in Hong Kong in 1935, the German paleoanthropologist Ralph von Koenigswald came across a large fossil primate molar that did not belong to any known species. Over the next four years he searched further in Hong Kong and Guangzhou (Canton) and found three more of the oversize teeth, thereby establishing the existence of an extinct ape, the largest primate ever to roam the earth. He named the genus Gigantopithecus, meaning "gigantic ape," and the species blacki, in honor of his late friend and colleague Davidson Black.
        At the time of the discovery, during the 1930s, von Koenigswald was working primarily in Java, unearthing fossils of human ancestors and their relatives. China's unique fossil shops had already played a major role in tracking down Homo erectus, which lived in Asia between about one million and 300,000 years ago. Homo erectus remains were first unearthed in Java in the 1890s, but pursuit of the source of dragon bones subsequently led to a system of fossil-filled crevices and caverns near the town of Zhoukoudian (Choukoutien), thirty miles from Beijing. There, in 1929, a team of Chinese and Western scientists discovered the first of a series of Homo erectus skulls that became world famous as "Peking man."
        The original fossils of Peking man disappeared during the confusion of World War II - fortunately, after they were described and cast by anatomist Franz Weidenreich. The war also caught up with von Koenigswald, who was taken prisoner by the Japanese in Java. His precious collection of Gigantopithecus teeth - at that point, the only known specimens of the fossil ape - spent the war years in a milk bottle buried in a friend's backyard on the island.

Report Spam   Logged

"All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream." - Edgar Allen Poe
Pages: [1] 2   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy