Chinese scientists have found a piece of human parietal bone from mammal fossils at Zhoukoudian, located in Beijing's Fangshan District, adding a new fossil discovery to the Peking Man Site, according to the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

In the past 100 years, the remains of the Homo erectus pekinensis, who lived 700,000 to 200,000 years ago, discovered at the site have attracted the attention of scholars at home and abroad, making them one of the most important materials for exploring human evolution, said the institute.

So far, scientists have discovered over 20 localities containing mammal fossils at the Zhoukoudian site.

The newly discovered fossil is yellow-brown and has been completely petrified. The bone's thickness, curvature and size are the same as the right parietal bone of a Zhoukoudian Homo erectus pekinensis' skull.

By applying CT scanning and three-dimensional reconstruction, it was discovered 70 meters away from the first site where the remains were found.

The site, discovered in 1932, was excavated from 1934 to 1937, and a large number of stone tools and mammal fossils dating to 200,000 years ago were unearthed.

The discovery will help scientists study human evolution in the area through comparative anatomy and molecular biology and provide important specimens for exploring the evolution of ancient humans in China in the past one million years, according to the IVPP.