An extinct hominid postulated from bones found in Java in 1891 and originally designated Pithecanthropus erectus because it was thought to represent a species evolutionarily between apes and humans. Pithecanthropus is now classified as Homo erectus.
Also called Java man
See more at Homo erectus
First recorded in 1870–75; from New Latin: literally “ape-man”; from Greek píthēk(os) “ape” + Greek ánthrōpos “human being”
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But after further inspection, he changed the name to Pithecanthropus erectus, an upright “ape-man.”
From New York Times ● Apr. 10, 2019
Professor Eugene Dubois, 82, Dutch anthropologist who in 1891 found the first skull of the Java ape man, concluded he had discovered the "missing link," called it Pithecanthropus erectus; in Haelen, Belgium.
From Time Magazine Archive
First Pithecanthropus relics were found in Java by a Dutchman, Eugene Dubois, in 1892.
From Time Magazine Archive
Britain's Sir Arthur Keith, however, world's greatest authority on fossil man, considers Pithecanthropus the earliest known form of man.
From Time Magazine Archive
So Pithecanthropus is a part of the chain leading to man, not far from the place where the human line sprang from a lower primate ancestor.
From The Doctrine of Evolution Its Basis and Its Scope by Crampton, Henry Edward
In the museum, the clergyman remarks: "It is not certain that there has been much change in our intellectual and moral attainments since pithecanthropus dropped the first half of his name."
From Time Magazine Archive
The early haunt of the pithecanthropus was in the south of France, at Aix.
From Time Magazine Archive
With the utmost caution the pithecanthropus descended the tree upon the opposite side from the great nocturnal prowler, and, closely followed by Tarzan, moved silently away through the night across the plain.
From Tarzan the Terrible by Burroughs, Edgar Rice
The great cat, flattened upon its belly, remained motionless except for twitching tail and snarling lips where it lay perhaps fifty feet beyond the body of the pithecanthropus.
From Tarzan the Terrible by Burroughs, Edgar Rice
At the conclusion of the brief ceremony Tarzan, glancing in the direction of the hairless pithecanthropus, discovered that the latter had recovered consciousness and was sitting erect watching them intently.
From Tarzan the Terrible by Burroughs, Edgar Rice
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
