Homo erectus from Nanjing

Abstract

The Huludong Cave (Calabash Cave) is a karst cave in the Tangshan hills, just east of Nanjing, China. An investigation in 1992 by members of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology (NIGP) recovered numerous mammalian fossils, and a joint work team was assembled from members of the NIGP and the IVPP (Institute for Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology) in Beijing. Systematic excavations commenced, and in early 1993 Liu Luhong, a local laborer, discovered the first of two partial crania (an isolated upper molar was also found). A detailed description of the human remains was expeditiously provided in Chinese (with a short English abstract) by Lu Zune, a professor of archaeology at Beijing University (1996), as part of a monograph on the site and its contents by Lu and an archaeological team from the Nanjing Municipal Museum.