The Piltdown Man

Between 1912 and 1913, in the small English village of Piltdown, Charles Dawson--an amateur archaeologist who specialized in fish fossil--, Arthur Smith Woodward--leading Geologist and keeper of the department of Geology in England 's Natural History Museum--, and Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin--a French Paleontologist and Jesuit priest-- discovered what was believed by many to be the 'missing link ' between apes and mankind. There they found fragments of a skull--that was distinctly human--, a jawbone--ape-like in structure with two flat molar teeth intact that were similar to that of modern humans--and a canine tooth. In December of 1912, Woodward announced the discoveries at a meeting of the Geological Society; claiming the fossil at an estimate of 500,000 mya. This spurred excitement and controversy for the scientific community. Before these discoveries, England had to yet have

On the contrary, scientist began to unearth new fossils in Asia and Africa, that were thought to be human ancestors that came hundreds of thousands of years old after Piltdown Man. They were found to be less human with small skulls, but without authorization to the Piltdown bones and efficient dating methods, they were all but ignored because they contraindicated Eoanthropus dawsonii. It was not until 1949, when the bones were discovered to be around a hundred thousand years old; with the application of newly discovered fluoride dating. Subsequently, they were fully analyzed in 1953 and exposed as a hoax. Scientist discovered that the jawbone indeed came from a female orangutan and was less than 100 years old. They also found that the teeth appeared to have been filed down and the front part of the jaw was broken off. Apart from that, the stains on the bones were shown to have been made. To this day, we have not discovered who was behind the Piltdown man Hoax. National pride all but blinded some of the scientist in that era but some also fell victims of groupthink and conformation