Look... If it makes you feel better to believe in junk-science then please don't let me rain on your parade. I posted this article more as a lark for those of us that know the truth than to upset those of you sensitive to the challenges to your religion.
I hope that you will forgive me.
Be well!
No flame wars, just asking for you to support a claim you made. Pekin Man was not a hoax; I still think you must be confusing that find with Piltdown Man, which was a hoax.
And I am aware that evolution is a theory; I have posted definitions many times of what a theory is in science (they are on my FR home page). But in science, a theory is one or more related hypotheses which have a lot of supporting data, which make predictions, and which have withstood the test of time. "Theory" in science does not mean "guess" or "hunch."
By the way, the Pekin Man find was not just one individual. It was quite a few, and they were studied by the scientist who found them. Since the war, other finds have been made in the same area, though none as spectacular as the original ones.
(See? No flame war.)
But I don't see where finding, or maybe finding, or claiming to have found, a new, bigger and better, bird like fossil makes a case for or against darwinism(?)
Evolution itself, changes in, and adaption of, structure over time, is pretty well assumed. Other implications of that theory are what causes debate.
What is not universally granted, what is possibly the minority view, is that life results from cataclismic soup and that humankind itself is part of Gigantoraptor Erlianensis' family tree.
I don't see where disagreement over the validity or lack thereof of Peking Man bears on that debate. There is a huge pile of evidence telling us that humans differ from each other across time and geography.
What's wrong with simply marveling at the possibility of another critter in the record?
It ain't like anyone is going to posit a featherless, huge, beaked, upright, lizard (or not) as somekind of missing link to Paris Hilton.
Rosy O'Donnell - maybe.
Wow. I’ve rarely seen projection on such a massive scale.
You couldn't have done a better job in illustrating your lack of understanding as to the nature and requirements of scientific theories. It's absolutely contradictory to refer to a "theory" with no supporting evidence. No scientific idea gets anywhere near to the point of being properly called a "theory" without extensive and/or specific evidence in its support.
That's wildly false. Granted the original "Peking Man" (Chinese Homo erectus from Zhoukoudian) fossils never left China, and were lost with the baggage of the U.S. Marines evacuating ahead of the Japanese, but they certainly were studied extensively in laboratories. Davidson Black, and following his death in 1934 Franz Weidenreich, made highly accurate casts and sent them to scientists and institutions around the world. There were also photographs, measurements, detailed descriptions, and even X-rays. All of this record material was brought back to the United States by Weidenreich who left China ahead of the Marines in 1941. For instance here is one of the x-rays (and an ordinary photograph) of Skull XII:
Here's a better image of the same skull:
What's more further remains of Homo erectus have been excavated, in situ, at the original "Peking Man" site since the war, and we still have those fossils.
Indeed peices of a skull were found in 1966 that matched perfectly with casts of material found by Davidson Black in 1934. Here's a picture and description of that skull from chineseprehistory.org:
Skull V from Zhoukoudian has an interesting history. Portions of this skull-cap were first found in the 1930s. Along with the rest of the human fossil collection from Zhoukoudian these fragments were lost during World War II. Excellent molds of all the human specimens were made, however, and primary casts are still available at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing and the American Museum in New York. In 1966 the frontal bone and a portion of the occipital bone of Skull 5 were found during renewed excavations at Zhoukoudian. They fit perfectly with casts of the original pieces found in 1934 and 1936, allowing for the reconstruction of a nearly complete skull-cap. Skull 5 is thought to come from younger deposits at Zhoukoudian and to show certain relatively advanced features compared to other crania from the site. In overall character, however, it does not differ significantly from previously known specimens of "Peking Man."
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Creationist Arguments: Peking Man (talkorigins)
www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_peking.html
Thanks to the InternetArchive we can still access the extensive information and resources at the recently defunct "ChinesePrehistory.org":
web.archive.org/web/20060428134041/http://www.chineseprehistory.org/