The Piltdown Man: Unearthed in England in 1912, the Piltdown Man was hailed as the “missing link” between apes and humans, featuring a human-like skull with an ape’s jaw. It bolstered nationalist pride in British evolution. However, in 1953, scientific tests exposed it as a deliberate forgery: the skull was medieval human, the jaw from an orangutan, filed and stained to appear ancient. The teeth were artificially worn. The hoax misled paleoanthropology for decades, skewing research. Despite extensive investigations, the identity of the forger—possibly Charles Dawson, the discoverer, or an associate—remains unproven, making it one of science’s most infamous deceptions.
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