Wushan Man

Wushan Man (Chinese: 巫山人; pinyin: Wūshānrén, literally "Shaman Mountain Man") are the remains of an extinct ape. Originally considered a subspecies of Homo erectus (H. e. wushanensis), it is now thought to be based upon fossilized fragments of an extinct non-hominin ape.

The remains that have become known as "Wushan Man" were found in 1985 in Longgupo (龙骨坡, literally "Dragon Bone Slope" which is an alternate English name for it), Zhenlongping Village, Miaoyu Town of Wushan County, Chongqing in the Three Gorges area of China 20 kilometres (12 mi) south of the Yangtze River. They have been dated to around two million years ago.

The cave at Longgupo is called "Dragon Bone Slope", due to the way the collapse of the cave's roof and walls shaped the above land.^{fig. 1} It was discovered as a site containing fossils in 1984 and then initially excavated by a team of Chinese scientists, led by Huang Wanpo of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing and the Chongqing National Museum (Sichuan Province) from 1985 to until 1988. The deposits on the cave floor are over 22 m deep, with the 10 m containing fossils overlain by 12 m that do not.^{fig. 2}

In 1986, three fore-teeth and a left mandible with two molars were unearthed together with the animal fossils including teeth from an extinct type of large ape Gigantopithecus and an extinct pygmy giant panda Ailuropoda microta. Excavations carried between 1997 and 1999 and then between 2003 and 2006 have found additional stone tools and animal fossils including remains of 120 species of vertebrates, of which 116 are mammals. This suggests the fossils existed originally in a subtropical forest environment.

...
Wikipedia