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Wushan Man (, literally "Shaman Mountain Man") are the remains of an extinct ape. Originally considered a subspecies of ''Homo erectus'' (''H. e. wushanensis''), it is now thought to be based upon fossilized fragments of an extinct non-hominin ape.〔〔Handwerk B. (2009). (Early "Human" Is Ape After All, Discoverer Decides ) ''National Geographic News'' June 17, 2009〕 The remains that have become known as "Wushan Man" were found in 1985 in Longgupo (literally "Dragon Bone Slope" which is an alternate English name for it), Zhenlongping Village, Miaoyu Town of Wushan County, Chongqing in the Three Gorges area of China south of the Yangtze River. They have been dated to around two million years ago. ==History of find== The cave at Longgupo is called "Dragon Bone Slope", due to the way the collapse of the cave's roof and walls shaped the above land.〔fig. 1 It was discovered as a site containing fossils in 1984 and then initially excavated by a team of Chinese scientists, led by Huang Wanpo of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing and the Chongqing National Museum (Sichuan Province) from 1985 to until 1988. The deposits on the cave floor are over 22 m deep, with the 10 m containing fossils overlain by 12 m that do not.〔fig. 2 In 1986, three fore-teeth and a left mandible with two molars were unearthed together with the animal fossils including teeth from an extinct type of large ape Gigantopithecus and an extinct pygmy giant panda Ailuropoda microta. Excavations carried between 1997 and 1999 and then between 2003 and 2006 have found additional stone tools and animal fossils including remains of 120 species of vertebrates, of which 116 are mammals. This suggests the fossils existed originally in a subtropical forest environment. The presence of Sinomastodon, Nestoritherium, Equus yunnanensis, Ailuropoda microta remains in the level containing the jaw suggested that its remains belonged to the earliest part of the Pleistocene or late Pliocene.〔 Dating of the layers containing the fossil remains was initially done using archaeomagnetic dating of traces of the Earth's ancient magnetic field. These confirmed a Pleistocene age linking the fossil jaw to around 1.78 million to 1.96 million years ago and so the same time as the human fossils that appeared in Africa's Olduvai Gorge. Later in 1992, a joint Chinese-American-Canadian research team using electron spin resonance dating and a deer tooth from one of the cave's upper levels three meters above that containing the jaw dated this level to a minimum age of 750,000 years and a most likely age of 1 million making the layers below at least and probably much older in date than this. More recent dating techniques suggest the layer containing the fossils are 2 million to 2.04 million years old.〔Hongjiang W.(2007 Nov 13) (New human fossil find adds millennia to China's history ). ChinaView〕〔(Chinese Scientists Conclude Wushan Man Is Oldest Human Fossil In China ) November 13, 2007〕 Early reports of the excavation were in Chinese journals and did not gather attention from outside China.〔 In 1992, Russell Ciochon was invited to Longgupo to examine and provide a reliable age for the jaw. This led to the published in 1995 by Ciochon and Chinese paleoanthropologist of the findings in the journal Nature.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Wushan Man」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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