Exclusive Canine Tooth from 'Peking Man' Found in Swedish Museum Collection

This is an extremely incredible find. We and our Chinese colleagues are weighed down. With latest technology, a canine tooth that has not been handled can inform us so much more than in the long-ago, such as what they eat," says Per Ahlberg, professor of evolutionary developmental biology at Uppsala University.

Swedish paleontologists were the earliest scientists to go to China in the early on 20th century, and they conceded out a series of expeditions in teamwork with Chinese colleagues. They establish huge numbers of fossils of dinosaurs and further vertebrates. The material was sent to Sweden and the recognized paleontologist Carl Wiman, who known and described the fossils. But when the direction of research altered after Wiman's death, 40 cartons were left unopened and forgotten until they recognize. In recent weeks, they have been open by Per Ahlberg, his colleague Martin Kundrát, and Museum Director Jan Ove Ebbestad, who had strained attention to the cartons in the storeroom at the Museum of Evolution.


Recently, they have left through the material mutually with foremost Chinese paleontologists commencing the Beijing Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, who be animated when their Swedish colleagues contacted them. The Museum of development has the most excellent collection of Chinese fossils of dinosaurs and further vertebrates external of China, and the stuffing of the 40 cartons more enhance the value of the collection.

The fossil material comes from various different areas in China. In Zhoukoudian, southwest of Beijing, a canine tooth was originating from Homo erectus that is, Peking man. Then wealthy finds were complete of skulls and other skeletal parts, but all of this left in a strange way through World War II. All that leftovers in China at the moment are five teeth and an only some pieces of skull bone that were found in the 1950s and 1960s. So the three teeth as of Peking man at the Museum of Evolution have be regard as being between the most expensive parts of the collection. And now they have exposed a fourth tooth and it is untouched.

According to Professor Liu Wu from the Chinese college of Sciences, it is a cracked, but or else well-preserved canine tooth. "This is a tremendously essential find. It is the only canine tooth in maintenance. It can give up significant information about how Homo erectus lives in China," he says. The tooth is to be examining with recent technology. By studying how the tooth was damaged down and looking at probable microscopic mineral granules from plant leftovers, it may be likely to problem out what Peking man ate. Combining this with the extra material in the cartons, these scientists trust to be capable to rebuild some of the plant and animal life that existed in Peking man's environment.
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