A working committee was founded Saturday in Beijing to trace the
mysteriously lost skulls of Peking
Man, fossils of homo erectus discovered in a suburban area of
the Chinese capital 76 years ago.
Peking was the old English spelling for Beijing.
The discovery of the 500,000-year-old skull fossil in 1929 by a
Chinese archaeologist was regarded one of the most decisive steps
in the scientific quest to trace Peking Man's prehistoric
development from the apes.
Five intact Peking Man skulls, 147 teeth and some bone
fragments, however, went missing during the World War II when they
were shipped to the United States in an attempt to escape Japanese
looting.
China, the United States and Japan all started searching for the
precious fossils after the war, but their whereabouts kept
mysterious till today.
The tracing work used to be non-governmental before the
committee was set up, but the involvement of the district
government of Fangshan, where Peking Man was found, changed the
situation.
The working committee is headed by the district government, and
the Peking Man Ruins management and palaeo-anthropologists from the
Chinese
Academy of Sciences will work together to carry out the tracing
work.
The committee will make a detail plan on searching and
investigation, and will not give up any tip and clue, said Qi Hong,
committee director and acting head of Fangshan district
government.
(Xinhua News Agency July 3, 2005)