[1][2] The fossils were found in 1985 in Longgupo (龙骨坡 or "Dragon Bone Slope"), Zhenlongping Village, Miaoyu Town of Wushan County, Chongqing in the Three Gorges.

From 1985 to 1988, it was excavated by a team of Chinese scientists, led by Huang Wanpo from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing and the Chongqing National Museum (Sichuan Province).

In 1986, three fore-teeth and a left mandible with two molars were unearthed along with animal fossils including teeth from the extinct large ape Gigantopithecus and pygmy giant panda Ailuropoda microta.

The incisor was found to be more consistent with that of an East Asian person, who may have accidentally entered the fissure of the Longgupo Cave deposits because of natural forces such as flowing water.

He is convinced that the Longgupo fossil do not belong to a pre-erectus human, but rather to unknown apes that originated from primal forests in Pleistocene Southeast Asia.

Russell Ciochon no longer believes that Gigantopithecus and H. erectus coexisted in the same environment[1]—an argument he had previously made in his book 1990 Other Origins: The Search for the Giant Ape in Human Prehistory.

911 A key factor in changing his opinion about the fossil was a 2005 visit to the Guangxi Natural History Museum in Nanning, where he examined a large number of primate teeth from the Pleistocene.

A middle school textbook, The Chinese History (published by People's Education Press), has plans to include the discovery of "Wushan Man" as a part of its content.