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Davidson Black 1884-1934

Davidson Black was born and educated in Toronto. He had begun a career in medicine when Sir Grafton Elliot Smith interested him in the problem of fossil man. After World War I, Black accepted a...

Davidson Black was born and educated in Toronto. He had begun a career in medicine when Sir Grafton Elliot Smith interested him in the problem of fossil man. After World War I, Black accepted a post at the Pekin Union Medical College, considering China to be a likely field for his studies. There, in 1927, on the basis of a fossil tooth found at Chou Kou Tien, he identified a new genus and species hominid, Sinanthropus pekinensis. This discovery of "Peking man" was subsequently confirmed by the excavations of W.C. Pei and a team of Chinese and European scientists working with Black. He died in China.


Plaque via Alan L. Brown's site Toronto Plaques. Full page here.

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