Tooth from prehistoric woman reveals life and times of Peking Man

A single tooth from a rare and important shipment of fossil finds – forgotten for decades in an unopened box in museum storage – has been rediscovered, and it is giving experts new knowledge about Peking Man, considered an ancient ancestor of modern humans.

The tooth has a strange, globe-trotting history that reaches back 500,000 years, to the time of Peking Man. Peking Man (Sinanthropus pekinensis) was not a single individual, but a species of Homo erectus who were very similar to modern humans, having a large brain, and similar skull and bone sizes, but who had heavy brows and large, chinless jaws. They lived between 750,000 and 200,000 years ago.