Woodward Original Early Drawing of Pithecanthropus

WOODWARD, Alice B. (1862-1951).
Pithecanthropus.
Original Illustration in pen, ink and grey wash, heightened in white.
c.1905-1912.
10 5/8" x 7 5/8" sheet.

Original artwork for Henry R. Knipe's "Evolution in the Past". Illustrated on page 187.

The terms Anthropopithecus (Blainville, 1839) and Pithecanthropus (Haeckel, 1868) are obsolete taxa describing either chimpanzees or archaic humans. Both are derived from Greek ἄνθρωπος (anthropos, "man") and πίθηκος (píthēkos, "ape" or "monkey"), translating to "man-ape" and "ape-man", respectively.

Anthropopithecus was originally coined to describe the chimpanzee and is now a junior synonym of Pan. It had been also used to describe several other extant and extinct species, among others the fossil Java Man. Very quickly, the latter was reassigned to Pithecanthropus, originally coined to refer to a theoretical "missing link". Pithecanthropus is now classed as Homo erectus, thus a junior synonym of Homo.