Prehistoric Animal Fossils Unearthed in China

Nearly 1,000 pieces of prehistoric animal fossils have been unearthed at China’s Peking Man Site, 30 miles southwest of Beijing.

The mountainous area has been the focus of prehistory studies around the world since 1921. That’s when Swedish geologist Johan Gunnar Andersson and American palaeontologist Walter Granger came to China in search of prehistoric fossils.

The two foreign scientists found skulls of „primitive men“ at the Dragon Bone Hill.

The bones of a 750-thousand-year-old Homo erectus, commonly known as Peking Man, were discovered in the 1920s during cave excavations in Zhoukoudian.

For more than half a century, Chinese officials and scientists didn’t do any big digs due to a lack of advanced archaeological technology.

Decades later, Chinese archaeologists, armed with the most advanced equipment and technology, have entered the quiet mountains, determined to rewrite history.

Unlike the first major excavation in the 1920s with foreigners leading the excavation, Chinese archaeologists are leading the project.

[Gao Xing, Excavation Team Director]: (Mandarin, gender unknown)
„From the limited accumulative formation, we have discovered a lot of animal fossils, tools made by human beings as well as the remains of burning sites. Although we have discovered all these before, the discovery this time brings along much more complete scientific information.“

The cave site in Zhoukoudian has preserved the remains of at least 40 individuals and is the largest single source of Homo erectus fossils in the world.

(NTDTV)