Swedish geologist Johan Gunnar Andersson first started his explorations of the region in 1918 at an area called "Chicken-bone Hill" by locals who had misidentified the rodent fossils that were found in abundance there, but it was not until 1921 that he and American palaeontologist Walter W. Granger were led to the site known as "Dragon Bone Hill" by local quarry men. Noticing some white quartz that was foreign to the area he immediately realised that this would be a good place to search for the remains of primitive man.