The Peking Man Skulls Searching Committee on Monday declared the latest clues on searching for the lost fossil treasures.

The committee was set up in Fangshan District of Beijing, home to the Peking Man skulls, in July this year by the local government and consists of many famous paleontologists in China.

Four key clues among 63 pieces of information

The committee has received 63 pieces of information from areas like Beijing, Jilin Province, Fujian Province and Taiwan Province in the past two months. Experts with the committee screened the information and found four might be important:

A citizen surnamed Wu in Beijing claimed a professor surnamed Gu in Gansu Province once was invited to write autobiography for Jia Lanpo, one of the finders of the Peking Man skulls and also a guru on Peking Man studies. Gu once "recorded an American major's testimony at the Far East Military Court when researching at a Japanese archive, and the testimony mentioned the skulls."

A citizen surnamed Ren in Beijing claimed he knew one person whose father was a doctor in Peking Union Medical College Hospital, where the skulls were kept, and the doctor "took one skull home and the skull now is buried in a house."

A citizen surnamed Liu said he could help contact a wartime revolutionist who "has a Peking Man scull at hand."

A citizen surnamed Wu from Jiangxi Province said a 121-year-old man in Jiangxi once served as a high-ranking official under Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the forerunner of China's democratic revolution. The old man claimed that "the skulls are still in China" and he knows the whereabouts.

The searching committee will trace the valuable clues and publicize any important development, said Liu Yajun, deputy-director of the Peking Man Skulls Searching Committee and also director of the Culture Committee in Fangshan District, the birthplace of the skulls.

Last witness specifies on missing boxes

"I packed up the fossils found in Zhoukoudian in Fangshan District, including the Peking Man Skulls, and sent them to the office of Bo Wen, the Chief of General Affairs of Peking Union Medical College Hospital," said Hu Chengzhi, a retired paleontologist with China Geological Museum.

Hu worked at the Cenozoic Era Research Center, China's first paleoanthropological institution, set up by the Chinese Geological Survey Institute in Peking Union Medical College Hospital.

It was done about three weeks before the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 8, 1941. The fossils were put inside two white boxes, the larger one 48 inches long, 22 inches wide and 11 inches high, and the smaller one 45 inches long and 22 inches wide and high, Hu said.

Some experts argued the fossils might have been intercepted and smashed by Japanese soldiers as trash, but Hu disagrees.

The fossils were packed with six layers of special paper and clothes and carefully locked in boxes marked with "CASE 1" and "CASE 2", Hu said.

Wang Xizhi, then head of the hospital, once told Hu the boxes were transferred to other places after staying at the hospital for one night, but no one knew where they were sent to.

Perhaps no Chinese knows where they are now, Hu said.

Why search for them

In the past 64 years after the skulls were lost, generations of experts and non-governmental organizations have been searching for them.

"Mankind can give up many things, but there is one thing that we can never abandon -- that is our ancestors," said Gao Xing, an expert of ancient vertebrates, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

"Most clues seemed not authoritative enough. I am not optimistic about the results," said Jia Yuzhang, son of Jia Lanpo. "But the searching could help the nation remember the loss as a pain China experienced during the war."

The first Peking Man skull was discovered about 76 years ago and lost 64 years ago.

The missing fossils involve five intact skulls, together with 147 teeth, broken skulls, a thighbone, a lower jaw bone and collar bone.

The discovery of the Peking Man, who lived about 400,000 to 500,000 years ago, was one of the most decisive steps in the scientific quest to trace man's prehistoric development from the apes.

The ape-man already possessed the basic human characteristics -- he could walk erect and make use of simple tools, and knew how to use fire.

(Xinhua News Agency September 6, 2005)