In fact, the skull and thigh bone were about 50 feet apart, but Dubois concluded they belonged to the same individual.
The first Homo erectus finds were given the names Java Man and Peking Man.1,2 Eugène Dubois, a Dutch medical doctor and anatomist, made his famous discovery in 1891 on the island of Java and originally called it Pithecanthropus erectus. His Java Man consisted of just a skullcap, a thigh bone, and a molar tooth found separately in the same layer of volcanic ash. In fact, the skull and thigh bone were about 50 feet apart, but Dubois concluded they belonged to the same individual. An ardent evolutionist and Darwin fan, he immediately claimed he’d found a transitional form. His argument was based primarily on the skullcap’s pronounced brow ridge and size. It was smaller than the average modern human but still well within the known variation for humans. The thigh bone was identical to modern humans.