Research Highlights

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  • Ecology & evolution

Published online: 12 March 2009 | doi:10.1038/nchina.2009.53

Human evolution: Peking Man just got older

Tim Reid

Introduction

© (2009) istockphoto.com

Determining the age of early human fossils is vital for understanding human evolution and migrations of early populations. The largest single find of early human fossils in the world was that of Zhoukoudian Homo erectus, commonly known as 'Peking Man', discovered in caves near Beijing in the 1920s. There has been some debate over the age of the fossils, mainly because of difficulties with dating methodologies. Using a relatively new dating method, Guanjun Shen at Nanjing Normal University in China, Darryl Granger at Purdue University in the USA and co-workers¹ have now determined the age of Peking Man to around 750,000 years old — 200,000 years older than previously thought.

The researchers collected samples of quartz from different sedimentary layers in the caves, and measured the decay of aluminium and beryllium isotopes held within the grains. Previous dating attempts using uranium isotopes or electron spin resonance had placed the earliest human remains at half a million years old, whereas the new radioisotope dating indicates an age of around 750,000 years.

This new date range suggests that early humans survived throughout both glacial and interglacial periods in north China. The researchers hope that continued investigation into the site using radioisotope dating will add significantly more knowledge and understanding about the evolution of humankind in East Asia.

The authors of this work are from:
College of Geographical Sciences, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China; Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA.

Reference

1. Shen, G., Gao, X., Gao, B. & Granger, D. E. Age of Zhoukoudian Homo erectus determined with ²⁶Al/¹⁰Be burial dating. Nature doi:10.1038/nature07741 (2009). | Article |