In September 2018, China Daily ran a story that found its way to my desk. It featured the photograph of a beautifully preserved fossil skull with huge brow-ridges, with a caption speculating – wrongly, as it would turn out – that it belonged to a species of human known as Homo heidelbergensis.
The article told a remarkable story about the discovery of this fossil some 85 years earlier. Japanese forces had been occupying the city of Harbin in north-eastern China in 1933. They ordered a team of local workers to help build a railway bridge across the Songhua River.
