BLACK, DAVIDSON

born July 25, 1884, Toronto, Ont., Can. died March 15, 1934, Peking, China Canadian physician and physical anthropologist who first postulated the existence of a distinct form of early man, popularly known as Peking man. A graduate of the University of Toronto, Black taught at Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, which he left to join the Canadian army medical corps in 1917. When he was studying comparative anatomy with G. Elliot Smith, at that time working on the Piltdown material, Black became deeply interested in the problems of man's origin. After World War I and until his death, Black served in China as professor of embryology and neurology at the Peking Union Medical College. He first searched unsuccessfully for remains of early man in Jehol (North China), then in Thailand. Then in 1927, at Chou-k'ou-tien, near Peking, a hominid lower molar of unusual pattern was discovered. The phylogenetic importance of this fossil was immediately recognized by Black, who inferred from this single tooth the existence of a previously unknown hominid genus and species, which he named Sinanthropus pekinensis. In 1932 he pointed out the close relationship between Peking man and Pithecanthropus erectus from Java. Later discoveries of skulls and other fossil bones proved the accuracy of Black's judgment.