The English Fossil Skull That Was a Forty-Year Hoax And Still Made the Royal Society's Reputation
In 1912 an English amateur archaeologist named Charles Dawson announced the discovery of an ape-jawed, human-craniumed skull in a Sussex gravel pit — a substantial 'missing link' in human evolution. The Piltdown skull was accepted as authentic for 41 years. A 1953 fluorine-dating analysis revealed it as a deliberate composite of a medieval human cranium, an orangutan jaw, and a chimpanzee tooth, all stained to look ancient.
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