There located a little hill at Zhoukouidian,in FangShan Disrtrict, in the southwest corner of Beijing. This hill is about 220 meters from north to south and about 190 meters from west to east, and is 145 meters high above the sea level. It is rich in calcareousness here and the animal fossil can often be found out in the calcareous cave or cranny to be sold to Chinese traditional medicine store. And these fossils were called "dragon bone", hence the name of the hill: Dragon Bone Hill.
From the 19th century, the dragon bone has gone out of china and drew the attention of the foreign paleontologists and the ancient-vertebrate experts who had published essays about the dragon bones. In 1918, the Swiss geologician, Andersson collected some fossil of rodent animals when he investigated the coalmines in this area. In 1921 to 1923, another paleontologist from Austria, Zdansky joined with Andersson in the second investigation of the area of Zhoukoudian and found large quantities of fossils of mammals, of which there were two fossils of human teeth, one deeply-landificated tooth of the upper cheek and the other the human premolar. |
