I just came across this story from the BBC, boy oh boy, is Jonathan Amos in for a shock one day when he learns about the story of "man made" climate change....maybe he will replace the word Piltdown Man with another Man?
Piltdown Man: A hoaxer still pursued by Jonathan Amos BBC News
It was a shocker, no doubt about it. The Piltdown Man scandal is arguably the greatest scientific fraud ever perpetrated in the UK.
When the fake remains of our earliest ancestor were unmasked for what they really were, shame was heaped on the research establishment. But exactly 100 years to the week that this extraordinary hoax was presented to the world, the Piltdown Man "fossils" are back in the lab and the subject of serious study.
The intention is not to try to re-authenticate them; rather, the purpose is to try to identify once and for all who was responsible for the deception.
The majority view is that it was Charles Dawson, a solicitor, antiquarian and amateur palaeontologist from the southern English county of Sussex.
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He was at hand for most of the major "discoveries" at the dig sites on the edge of Piltdown village.
Most people believe his hand was responsible for planting the key faux specimens in local gravels.
These included an ape-like jaw fragment, complete with molars and a canine tooth, some human-looking cranial parts, plus assorted stone tools and ancient mammal remains. Much of the haul was stained to reflect long-term burial in the gravels, to make the artefacts look like they truly were many hundreds of thousands of years old.
The collection was utter rubbish, of course: a mix of bones - some very modern - that had in a number of cases been crudely filed to give them the shape expected of an ancient human species.
But although chemical testing finally exposed the fraud in 1953, there has always been some doubt over the culprit's true identity.
Click above BBC link to read FULL report from Jonathan Amos
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