Bizarre Disappearances: The Peking Man Fossils

Casts of the Peking Man Skulls
Photo: Public Domain

During the 1920s, a group of famous fossils was found near Beijing. These fossils were mainly of the skulls, jawbones and teeth of a step in the human evolutionary chain dubbed Homo erectus pekinensis. They were one of the biggest scientific finds of the early 20th century. A man named Davidson Black is known as being the man who researched these fossils the most and it is a good thing too. He, and others, left copious notes regarding the fossils, which date back to roughly 750,000 to 780,000 years ago. These notes and some casts of the fossils are all that is left. The fossils themselves disappeared in 1941.

The Peking Man fossils were in a safe at the Peking Union Medical College when the decision was made to move them to the United States. The Japanese were advancing on the area and World War II was reaching its height. They were to be sent to the United States only for safekeeping until the end of the war, but they never made it there. As far as anyone knows, they never left China.

The fossils were meant to leave China via the U.S.S. President Harrison, but it was sunk by the Japanese before it reached the pick-up point. The fossils presumably left the college, but there is no record of them past there. They may have reached the Marines that were meant to escort them, but there is no record of that. There are rumors that they sank aboard a Japanese ship, were destroyed by the Japanese during a train raid or actually were secreted away to the United States. No one knows, but they would certainly be the find of yet another century if someone found out.