On rare occasions, a spectacular fossil may not be all it’s proclaimed to be. Worse, it may display a person’s capacity to hoodwink his peers. The Piltdown man fossils did exactly this for 40 years – confounding experts and causing some to pursue a false path of knowledge about human origins. Charles Dawson, a lawyer and amateur archeologist/paleontologist claimed he found a skull fragment at a gravel pit after the workers there had told of previous finds. Beginning in 1912, the controversial fossils were studied by Arthur Smith Woodward of the British Museum. When the description of the fragments of skull, jawbone and teeth was published by Smith Woodward, many professionals felt the jaw was not human and the Piltdown man was possibly a mixed-up composite. In 1915, a second site yielded more specimens. A staunch defender of the finds, Smith Woodward named the creature Eoanthropus dawson and concluded it was a half-million years old – older than the Neanderthal specimens of Europe. The finds were a boon to English natural history and showed an advanced form of hominid older than what was currently accepted. Suspicion hovered about the fossils. Dawson died in 1916.
In 1953, three scientists of the British Museum established that Piltdown man was indeed a fraud. A skull fragment was dated at only 50,000 years. But, even more damning was the result of tests that showed the jaw bones had been stained to imitate aging and the teeth filed to emulate wear. The other mammal fossil and artifacts that were also found at the Piltdown sites were revealed to be from another locale or of recent origin. Dawson was exposed. Also brought to light was that he had previously dealt in other fakery. Other scientists suggest that Dawson had an accomplice in Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit priest and paleontologist, who helped to perpetrate the hoax. No one made a profit from Piltdown man and fame or prestige may have been the motivation for this scientific scam.
- Sharon Hill (Scientist) |
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