Yuanmou Man

Yuanmou Man, Homo erectus yuanmouensis, refers to an ancestral human whose remnants, two incisors, were discovered near Danawu Village in Yuanmou County , Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture, in China's southwestern province of Yunnan.

Discovery and Dating
The remnants of Yuanmou Man were discovered on May 1st 1965 by the geologist Fang Qian, who was working for the Geological Mechanics Research Institute. Based on the palaeomagnetic dating of the rock they were found in, it was initially estimated that the fossils were about 1.7 million years old and thus represented the earliest fossils of human ancestors found in China and East Asia. However, this hypothesis has since been questioned. Some have argued that evidence does not support the appearance of hominidae in Asia prior to 1 million years ago, and this theory is supported by fanual material collected from the site in 1973 by the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology. The strata at the site were found to be complex and inverted, and recalculations based on this evidence would put the age of the Yuanmou man into the Middle Pleistocene, that is about 500,000 - 600,000 years old. This date is also supported by the later discovery of the remains of animals dating to the Middle Pleistocene (such as saber tooth tiger) at the site, alongside stone tools and coal ash.

Yuanmou Man thus appears to have existed as a "contemporary" to Lantian Man and Peking Man who also have been found in China. All are attributed to the species Homo erectus.

The fossils are on display at the National Museum of China, Beijing.