The Penghu Channel () or Pescadores Channel is the body of water that separates the

Penghu The Penghu ( , Hokkien Pe̍h-ōe-jī, POJ: ''Phîⁿ-ô͘'' or ''Phêⁿ-ô͘'' ) or Pescadores Islands are an archipelago of 90 islands and islets in the Taiwan Strait, about west of the main island of Taiwan across the Penghu Ch ...

islands from

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

island and links the

Taiwan Strait The Taiwan Strait is a strait separating the island of Taiwan and the Asian continent. The strait is part of the South China Sea and connects to the East China Sea to the north. The narrowest part is wide. Names Former names of the Tai ...

to the northeastern

South China Sea The South China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean. It is bounded in the north by South China, in the west by the Indochinese Peninsula, in the east by the islands of Taiwan island, Taiwan and northwestern Philippines (mainly Luz ...

. The channel has been considered narrow and potentially difficult to navigate in monsoon season. The channel is known for

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...

aged fossils dredged up from bottom sediments, including the archaic human mandible

Penghu 1 Penghu 1 is a fossil jaw (mandible) belonging to an extinct hominin species of the genus ''Homo.'' It was collected from seafloor sediments of the Penghu Channel off the coast of Taiwan, dating to sometime in the Middle Pleistocene or Late Pleis ...

as well as the extinct elephant ''

Palaeoloxodon huaihoensis ''Palaeoloxodon huaihoensis'' is an extinct species of elephant belonging to the genus ''Palaeoloxodon'' known from the Pleistocene of China. Taxonomy It was first named a subspecies of '' P. naumanni'' (which is principally known from materia ...

.''

References

Straits of Taiwan {{Taiwan-geo-stub