A Tooth on the Internet

Science Daily announced the finding of a Peking Man tooth in a Swedish museum. Peking Man belongs to the species Homo erectus, the first human ancestor to leave Africa. These fossils were excavated during the 1920s and 1930s in a cave system near the Chinese capital at Dragon Bone Hill (named for its dinosaur fossils). The first discoveries were made by representatives of the University of Uppsala during the 1921 an 1923 digging seasons. The 1926 announcement of the discovery of human molars in the material from those digs set off a digging spree that eventually unearthed skulls and stone tools. This was a gigantic discovery at a time when human fossils were extremely rare and the Scopes Monkey Trial reflected the generally hostile view of the average American towards the idea of evolution.

Plaster casts of the skulls were made and distributed to museums around the world, but the actual fossils remained in China until November, 1941 when they were loaded on a train to keep them away from the invading Japanese. The initial destination was a Chinese port city and then the United States. Somewhere en route to the port they disappeared. Speculation abounds about what happened, but a good guess is that they were waylaid by the Japanese and sank on a freighter called Awa Maru in 1945.

All that was left were three teeth at the University of Uppsala, or so it was thought. In reality the first Swedish researcher at the site had sent home about 40 cartons of mixed fossils that were stored in the Swedish museum and forgotten. Dragon Bone Hill also had numerous dinosaur fossils, and the museum has the best collection of Chinese dinosaurs outside China. As viewers of the Discovery Channel know Chinese dinosaurs are "hot" right now so when some Chinese experts visited the  museum, the old boxes were dragged out of storage and unsealed leading to the new discovery. Untouched since it was boxed up, the fractured canine tooth may have "microscopic mineral granules from plant remains" that could tell us what these early humans ate.

I was not the first entity to read this article. The computer program at Science Daily also read it and added links to archived articles about Chinese fossils, mammal tooth marks on dinosaur bones, CSI analysis of the bones of Copernicus, and cold adaptation of Peking Man. It also added advertisements for teeth whitening (the fossil could really use it), a dentist, tooth caps (the skull, if found, will definitely need caps or implants), and Japanese Red Pine Oil-guaranteed to kill all parasites, bacteria, viruses and molds. See for yourself at this link.