Piltdown Man

The Piltdown Man was a paleoanthropological fraud in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human. Although doubts about Piltdown Man's authenticity began to be expressed almost immediately after its announcement in 1912, it was still broadly accepted for many years, and the hoax was only definitively exposed in 1953. An extensive scientific review in 2016 established that the hoax had been perpetrated by amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson, apparently in pursuit of recognition from other archaeologists. In 1912, Dawson claimed that he had discovered the "missing link" between early apes and humans. If the Piltdown Man was found to be legitimate, it would have been a crucial transitional form between the two species. In February 1912, Dawson contacted Arthur Smith Woodward, Keeper of Geology at the Natural History Museum, stating he had found a section of a human-like skull in Pleistocene gravel beds near Piltdown, East Sussex. The find of the Piltdown Man, and the claims that Dawson was making were taken seriously due to Dawson's reputation in the archaeology community and for other local archaeological "discoveries". These "discoveries" were later found to also be false. That summer, Dawson and Woodward purportedly discovered more bones and artifacts at the site, which they connected to the same individual. These finds included a jawbone, more skull fragments, a set of teeth, and primitive tools. The fragments of the cranium that Dawson had originally found had human like features, whereas the lower jawbone that they found had resembled a jawbone of an ape. He also claimed that the stone tools and animal fossils were found in the same layer of Earth that the cranium and jawbone were found. Woodward reconstructed the skull fragments and hypothesised that they belonged to a human ancestor from 500,000 years ago....