Hu Chengzhi (; 23 August 1917 – 12 April 2018) was a Chinese

paleontologist Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure geolo ...

and

paleoanthropologist Paleoanthropology or paleo-anthropology is a branch of paleontology and biological anthropology, anthropology which seeks to understand the early development of anatomically modern humans, a process known as wikt:hominization, hominization, throug ...

. He made the plaster casts of the

Peking Man Peking Man (''Homo erectus pekinensis'', originally "''Sinanthropus pekinensis''") is a subspecies of '' H. erectus'' which inhabited what is now northern China during the Middle Pleistocene. Its fossils have been found in a cave some southw ...

skull in the 1930s, and identified the

Yuanmou Man Yuanmou Man (, ''Homo erectus yuanmouensis'') is a subspecies of '' H. erectus'' which inhabited the Yuanmou Basin in Yunnan Province, southwestern China, roughly 1.7 million years ago. It is the first fossil evidence of humans in China, though ...

(''Homo erectus yuanmouensis'') based on fossils collected by others. He discovered the first fossil of '' Keichousaurus'' in 1957, and this species, ''K. hui'', is named after him. A new hadrosaur discovered in Shandong is designated ''

Shantungosaurus ''Shantungosaurus'' (meaning "''Shandong Lizard''") is a genus of very large saurolophine hadrosaurid dinosaur found in the Late Cretaceous Wangshi Group of the Shandong Peninsula in China, containing a single species, ''Shantungosaurus gigante ...

'' ''giganteus'' by Hu in 1973. Hu left school at 13 owing to poverty, and worked at

Peking Union Medical College Peking Union Medical College, also as Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, is a national public medical sciences research institution in Dongcheng, Beijing, Dongcheng, Beijing, China. Originally founded in 1906, it is affiliated with the Nationa ...

Davidson Black Davidson Black, (July 25, 1884 – March 15, 1934) was a Canadian paleoanthropologist, best known for his naming of ''Sinanthropus pekinensis'' (now '' Homo erectus pekinensis''). He was Chairman of the Geological Survey of China and a Fel ...

's assistant. After Black died in 1934, Hu became an apprentice technician for fixing fossils at

Franz Weidenreich Franz Weidenreich (7 June 1873 – 11 July 1948) was a Jewish German anatomist and physical anthropologist who studied evolution. Life and career Weidenreich studied at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Universität in Strasbourg where he earned a medica ...

's laboratory. He made cast copies of Peking Man's skull, and he was the last Chinese eyewitness of the Peking Man fossils, before they were lost during the

Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War was fought between the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China and the Empire of Japan between 1937 and 1945, following a period of war localized to Manchuria that started in 1931. It is considered part ...

. Hu resigned from the institute in 1947. In the early 1950s, he began to work at the Ministry of Geology. Hu died in Beijing on 12 April 2018, aged 100.

References

1917 births 2018 deaths Chinese paleontologists Chinese paleoanthropologists Chinese men centenarians Biologists from Shandong {{China-scientist-stub