"Piltdown Man": a fossil hoax

    Discovered in England in 1912, "Piltdown" (Eoanthropus dawsoni) combines portions of a modern Homo cranial capacity with a heavy, ape-like jaw in a Pleistocene hominid. Although plausible at the time, discovery of other fossils such as Australopithecus suggested that such a combination was unlikely in the human lineage. Subsequent investigation published in 1953 revealed Piltdown to be a fake, made up skull fragments from a medieval human cranium and the jaw of a 500-yr-old Orang-utan (Pongo), both chemically aged.

    The author of the fake is uncertain: most authors believe it to be Charles Dawson, one of its co-discoverers. Other candidates include Arthur Woodward, the other co-discoverer; Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a paleontologist involved in the original excavation, also a catholic priest and prominent philosopher; and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, who was known to be interested in scientific "fakes" and was the sort to play a scientific practical joke.