Piltdown Man
- June 1912: A skull was found at
Piltdown in southern England in 1912
- It was called Piltdown Man
- Discovered by
Charles Dawson
- December 1912: Dawson displayed skull reconstruction at Geological Society meeting
- 1916: Charles Dawson died
- 1925: Edmonds reports geology error, but nobody listened
- 1943: Test for fluorine content of fossils proposed
- 1949: Fluorine test revealed that Piltdown bones are recent
- July 1953: Dr. J.S. Weiner finally suspects hoax
- 1953: Team at British Museum finally exposed the hoax
- Examination of fossil's teeth produced obvious evidence of fakery
- Sir Kenneth Oakley looks for origin of Piltdown bones
- Skull: Human, medieval, about 600 years old
- Jawbone: Orangutan, from Sarawak(?), about 500 years old
- This hominid did not fit into the pattern
- Attempts to fit it in set the science back decades
- Some scientists at the time rejected it
- By 1950 Piltdown was largely ignored
- Who Did It?
- 9 Aug 2016: SCIENCE magazine reports that Isabelle de Groote, working
with colleagues in Liverpool, used modern scanning and DNA analysis
methodsto reanalyze the artifacts. They concluded that the hoax was
pulled off by one person and that person was most likely Charles Dawson.
See the article "Study Reveals Culprit Behind Piltdown Man,..."
dated Aug 9, 2016.