Pithecanthropus erectus ('erect ape-man'), the name given by Dr Eugene Dubois, of the Dutch army medical service, to the animal reconstructed from fossilised remains found by him in Java. These consist of the upper part of a cranium, a left femur, and two molar teeth, and were found in 1891-2 on the left bank of the Bengawan river, near Trinil, during explorations conducted for the government of the Dutch Indies. The cranium and teeth were found close together, and the femur a few yards away and a year afterwards; but Dr Dubois believes them to belong to the same skeleton, and to be such as could only have belonged to an animal midway between man and the higher apes, and of pleistocene age. The cranium is midway in form and size between the normal human and the gorilla's skull, and rather closely resembles that of a microcephalous idiot. The find has given rise to much discussion and difference of opinion; many authorities holding that the femur and cranium have not been proved to belong to the same skeleton, and that, while the femur is undoubtedly human, the cranium is also probably of a very low human type; others wholly or partly agree with Dr Dubois. The diversity of opinion extends to the teeth, which are large and powerful.
See the discoverer's monograph, Pithecanthropus erectus (Batavia, 1894, in German); the paper read by Dr Dubois to the Royal Dublin Society, Jan. 23, 1895; Nature, vols. li., lii., liii., liv.; and in the present work the articles ANTHROPOID APES, MAN, SKULL.