Abstract
IN the two years 1937–39 a series of researches carried out by P. Teilhard do Chardin, Prof. Franz Weidenreich and their fellow-workers of the Conozoie Research Laboratory of the Geological Survey of China, papers on which have only just reached Great Britain (see NATURE, December 23, p. 1054 and December 30, p. 1097) has made a notable contribution to anthropological study, not merely in so far as it deals with early man in China, but also in its bearing upon fundamental problems of the development of the human stock and the origin and distribution of its varieties. How far Teilhard de Chardin's suggested need for a revision of Tertiary and Quaternary classification in geology and palæontology will be accepted as of general application may remain in abeyance for the moment; but his brilliant synthetic study of recent geological and palæontological discovery provides a new diagnosis—in China at least—for the much-debated division between Pliocene and Pleistocene in the form of the definite break, almost catastrophic in its proportions, in fauna and physiographic conditions between the Nihowan and Choukoutien phases of the so-called Sanmenian, which is followed by the appearance of man, who in some sort, it may be suggested, now might be regarded as a characteristic fossil.
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Early Man and his Forerunners. Nature 144, 1085–1086 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/1441085c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1441085c0