(State Key Project of the 9th five year plan-Origin of Early Humans and Environmental Background Series Monograph IV) --Paleolithic Site-The Renzidong Cave, Fanchang, Anhui Province

In the 1980’s, cement factories were built around the limestone area in southern Anhui where some factory workers discovered some fissures and caves in quarrying. In July 1984, Mr Sheng Hongjiang found some mammal fossils, so-called dragon bones, and submitted them to Anhui Museum and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP). Some of the fossils were identified as Middle Miocene Platybelodon sp., Kubanochoerus sp.etc. During the field investigation of the State Key Scientific Research Project “Research of the Early Hominid Ancestors of 2-4 Ma in China and Their Environmental Background”, Dr. Jin Changzhu led his team investigated the limestone quarries at Fangchang County and found two localities with Pleistocene cave-fissure deposits. Jin unearthed an upper jaw of a large primate Procynocephalus and some mammalian fossils such as Homotherium, Brachyrhizomys etc. A test excavation was carried out right away and an upper jay with three molars, a nearly complete lower jay and a juvenile lower jaw of Procynocephalus were unearthed from the third and fourth layers of the cave. After 25 days of test excavation, the team unearthed 4 upper jaws, 5 lower jaws and 45 isolated teeth of Procynocephalus and about 20 species of mammals, as well as some stone artifacts with evident hominid agency.
After four years’ excavation, several hundreds pieces of stone artifacts, bone artifacts and bones with hominid agency were unearthed, and more than 3000 pieces of vertebrate fossils were collected. About 75 species of vertebrates were identified.

1.Geographic and geological settings
2.Cultural remains
3.Fossil mammals
4.The characters of the mammalian fauna from the Renzidong Cave and its zoogeographical significance
5.Renzidong Cave fauna, its position and environment in the evolutionary history