Homo erectus


Homo erectus (Latin: "upright man") is an extinct species of the genus Homo. Dutch anatomist Eugene Dubois (1890s) first described it as Pithecanthropus erectus, based on a calotte (skullcap) and a modern-looking femur found from the bank of the Solo River at Trinil, in central Java. However, thanks to Canadian anatomist Davidson Black's (1921) initial description of a lower molar, which was dubbed Sinanthropus pekinensis, most of the early and spectacular discoveries of this taxon took place at Zhoukoudian in China and Tham Khuyen in North Vietnam. German anatomist Franz Weidenreich provided much of the detailed description of this material in several monographs published in the journal Palaeontologica Sinica (Series D). However, nearly all of the original specimens were lost during World War II. High quality Weidenreichian casts do exist and are considered to be reliable evidence; these are curated at the American Museum of Natural History (NYC) and at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (Beijing).