Science Past for April 11, 2009

Science Past | from the issue of April 11, 1959 Scientists urged to dig for specimens of Peking Man — Give up the loss of the bones of ancient Peking Man, one of man’s earliest ancestors, as a “perfect crime,” and start digging for new specimens of this Pleistocene forebear. This is the advice to anthropologists contained in Science (March 27). The famous bones were lost to science during the confusion of World War II. Negotiations had been completed to ship the precious specimens to the United States … and the bones in three cases were given to U.S. Marines who were being evacuated from Chinwangtao. But the ship ran aground in the Yangtze Kiang River, the Marines were captured, and no one knows what happened to Peking Man…. Excellent casts of the bones are available in various parts of the world which can be used for study.