Exposure
It was not until new technology for the dating of fossils was developed, in the late 1940s, that Piltdown Man came to be seriously questioned once again. In 1949, Dr Kenneth Oakley, a member of the staff at the Natural History Museum, tested the Piltdown fossils and found that the skull and jaw were not that ancient.
'It had simply been boiled and stained to match the colour and antiquity of the Piltdown gravels.'
He joined forces with Professor Joe Weiner and Sir Wilfrid Le Gros Clark from Oxford, to apply stringent tests to all the Piltdown remains. They realised that the human-like wear pattern on the teeth had been created by artificially filing down the teeth from an orang-utan jaw. The skull pieces were found to have come from an unusually thick-boned - but quite recent - human skull. It had simply been boiled and stained to match the colour and antiquity of the Piltdown gravels.
Although many of the mammal fossils were genuine, they had also been stained to match the skull and came from all over the world. It turned out that every single one of the 40 odd finds at Piltdown had been planted.
On 21 November 1953 the news broke, and headline writers revelled in the Natural History Museum's embarrassment: 'Fossil Hoax Makes Monkeys Out Of Scientists!' Weiner and Oakley quickly began an investigation to uncover the identity of the hoaxer. Who had had the access, the expertise and the motive to carry out such an outrageous forgery?
Published: 2003-11-14
Bookmark with:
What are these?