Science: Piltdown Culprit

Has the hoaxer been found?

It was one of science's most audacious hoaxes. For four decades after the announcement in 1912 of its discovery near the English hamlet of Piltdown, the curious fossil with the humanlike cranium and the apelike jaw was believed by many anthropologists to be the long-sought "missing link" between man and ape. But in 1953, after application of new analytic techniques to thefamous skull, the ruse was finally revealed: the Piltdown man, as the fossil was dubbed, was a fraud. It consisted of nothing more than fragments of modern human skulls mingled with portions of a contemporary ape...

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