Found: Tooth from extinct relative

Some 40 wooden boxes were sitting unopened in a corner at the Museum of Evolution in Uppsala. For 90 years! 

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  The Peking man is the popular name of fossils of human bones and teeth found at Zhoukoudian, near Beijing, in China. The person who once had the molar found in a box in Uppsala in his mouth lived in South East Asia, long before our ancestors began the long exodus from Africa. Above: Bust of the Peking man, on permanent display at Zhoukoudian, China.

• When the museum finally decided it was time to pry them open, something sensational was found: A 780 000 year old molar from an extinct relation of ours: The so-called Peking man. It’s the only such tooth of its kind.

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  Some 40 wooden boxes were sitting unopened in a corner at the Museum of Evolution in Uppsala - in one of them a 780 000 year old tooth was found.

• “It’s an important discovery. It’s the first molar from the Peking man,” says Per Ahlberg, Professor of Evolutionary Organismal Biology. The material in the 40 boxes was collected by the Uppsala researcher Otto Zdansky in the mid 1920’s, but they have for some reason remained unlocked during all these years. Now researchers hope that this find will shed new light on the Peking man’s eating habits. “The tooth hasn’t been handled since it was found and is in a good state,” says Ahlberg.

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  This illustration has no relevance to the article here.

• More information: Evolutionsmuseet, Uppsala