The Piltdown Man

Jan 19, 2026 · 42m

In December 1912, Arthur Smith Woodward, a paleontologist at the British Museum, presented something extraordinary to the Geographical Society: a "missing link" fossil, a species he named "Dawson's Dawn-man" after the Sussex solicitor who found the original fossil. It was the find of a lifetime, and a much-needed bit of national pride for the English. The only problem? It wasn't real. SOURCES: The Piltdown Man Hoax: Case Closed by Miles Russell Piltdown Man: The Secret Life of Charles Dawson by Miles Russell (Tempus, Stroud, 2003) https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/the-problem-of-piltdown-man/ https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/nov/23/piltdown-man-remains-exposed-as-fake-1953 https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2016/08/folklore-piltdown-man-hoax/ 'The Perpetrator at Piltdown' by J Winslow and A Meyer, Science (September, 1983) https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2016/august/piltdown-man-charles-dawson-likely-fraudster.html https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/piltdown-man-paleoanthropologys-april-fools-176401927/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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