The Jesuit and the skull : Teilhard de Chardin, evolution, and the search for Peking Man / Amir D. Aczel.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [265]-276) and index.

Documents the efforts of a French Jesuit priest to confront the struggle between science and religion upon his 1929 discovery of the Peking Man pre-human skull that represented a missing link between erect hunting apes and the human race's Cro-Magnon ancestors.

Banquet -- Prelude to evolution -- Darwin's breakthrough -- Stone tools and cave art -- Java man -- Teilhard -- Discovery in inner mongolia -- Australopithecus and the scopes trial -- Exile --Discovery of Peking man -- Teilhard meets Lucile Swan -- Yellow cruise and the Mongolian Princess -- Lucile Swan reconstructs Peking Man -- Peking Man vanishes -- Rome -- Aftermath -- Fossil record continues -- What really happened to Peking Man?

In December 1929, in a cave near Peking, diggers for an international team of scientists that included a French Jesuit priest named Pierre Teilhard de Chardin pulled from the rubble a skull of Homo erectus, still ensconced in its matrix of clay. It was the first discovery of remains of Homo erectus that quickly became known around the world as Peking Man, a key evolutionary link between the erect hunting apes and our Homo sapiens ancestors. And it also became a provocative piece of evidence in the roiling debate between creationism and evolution -- a debate that would reinvigorate decades of controversy between the scientific community and religious authorities. - Jacket flap.