25. The Belated Debunking of Piltdown Man
Despite the poor funding for African archaeological exploration, more proto-humans were discovered in Africa in the 1930s. Those finds, coupled with additional Neanderthal finds, left Piltdown Man as an odd outlier in human evolution. Nonetheless, the hoax had its powerful defenders, and it was not until the 1950s that the fossils were subjected to rigorous scientific examination.
They turned out to be fragments of a modern human skull, only 600 years old, the jaw and teeth of an orangutan, and the tooth of a chimpanzee. Chemical testing showed that the bones had been stained to make them look older, and the ape teeth filed down to look more human-like. As to the perpetrator, he was a disgruntled museum employee getting back at his boss, Britain’s chief paleontologist, who had denied him a pay raise.
