Age of Zhoukoudian Homo erectus determined with 26Al/10Be burial dating

Guanjun Shen (), Xing Gao, Bin Gao and Darryl E. Granger ()
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Guanjun Shen: College of Geographical Sciences, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210046, China
Xing Gao: Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Academia Sinica
Bin Gao: College of Geographical Sciences, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210046, China
Darryl E. Granger: Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907-2051, USA

Nature, 2009, vol. 458, issue 7235, 198-200

Abstract: Older and 'colder' dates for classic Homo erectus fossils The Homo erectus known familiarly as Peking Man holds an important place in palaeoanthropology and in the public imagination, not only as one of the earliest hominin discoveries but also because of where it was found. The Peking Man fossils were found during the 1930s in the classic locality of Longgushan ('dragon-bone hill') near the village of Zhoukoudian. The age of the deposits has since been hotly debated, but the issue has now been resolved using a recently developed technique that dates the cave sediments by measuring the burial of cosmogenic aluminium-26 and beryllium-10. Their age computes to about 770,000 years old — nearly 300,000 years earlier than usually thought. This implies that hominids were there during some rather chilly periods and raises doubts over some accepted ideas about the migration of early hominids northwards only in clement, interglacial times.

Date: 2009
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DOI: 10.1038/nature07741

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