Scientists seek to solve mystery of Piltdown Man

[Buster's Uncle]

Scientists seek to solve mystery of Piltdown Man
By By JILL LAWLESS | Associated Press – Wed, Dec 12, 2012.. .

 
LONDON (AP) — It was an archaeological hoax that fooled scientists for decades. A century on, researchers are determined to find out who was responsible for Piltdown Man, the missing link that never was.
 
In December 1912, it was announced that a lawyer and amateur archaeologist named Charles Dawson had made an astonishing discovery in a gravel pit in southern England — prehistoric remains, up to 1 million years old, that combined the skull of a human and the jaw of an ape.
 
Piltdown Man — named for the village where the remains were found — set the scientific world ablaze. It was hailed as the missing evolutionary link between apes and humans, and proof that humans' enlarged brains had evolved earlier than had been supposed.
 
It was 40 years before the find was definitively exposed as a hoax, and speculation about who did it rages to this day. Now scientists at London's Natural History Museum — whose predecessors trumpeted the Piltdown find and may be suspects in the fraud— are marking the 100th anniversary with a new push to settle the argument for good.
 
The goal, lead scientist Chris Stringer wrote in a comment piece published Wednesday in the journal Nature, is to find out "who did it and what drove them" — whether scientific ambition, humor or malice.
 
Stringer heads a team of 15 researchers — including experts in ancient DNA, radiocarbon dating and isotope studies — examining the remains with the latest techniques and equipment and combing the museum's archives for overlooked evidence about the evidence unearthed at sites around Piltdown.
 
"Although Charles Dawson is the prime suspect, it's a complex story," Stringer, the museum's research leader in human origins, told The Associated Press. "The amount of material planted at two different sites makes some people — and that includes me — wonder whether there were at least two people involved."
 
Doubts grew about Piltdown Man's authenticity in the years after 1912, as more remains were found around the world that contradicted its evidence. In 1953, scientists from London's Natural History Museum and Oxford University conducted tests that showed the find was a cleverly assembled fake, combining a human skull a few hundred years old with the jaw of an orangutan, stained to make it look ancient.
 
Ever since, speculation had swirled about possible perpetrators. Many people think the evidence points to Dawson, who died in 1916.
 
Other long-dead suspects identified by researchers include Arthur Smith Woodward, the museum's keeper of geology, who championed Dawson's discoveries and gave them vital scientific credibility. The finger has also been pointed at museum zoologist Martin Hinton; Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; and even "Sherlock Holmes" author Arthur Conan Doyle, who lived near Piltdown.
 
Stringer said the key may lie in a later find nearby — a slab of elephant bone nicknamed the "cricket bat" — that seemed to back up the first Piltdown discovery. It was revealed as a clumsy fake, carved with a steel knife from a fossilized elephant femur.
 
One theory is that Hinton — skeptical but afraid to openly question Woodward, his boss at the museum — might have planted it thinking it would be spotted as a hoax and discredit the whole find. A trunk with Hinton's initials found in a loft at the museum a decade after his death in 1961 contained animal bones stained the same way as the Piltdown fossils.
 
Miles Russell, senior lecturer in archaeology at Bournemouth University, thinks the museum's work may shed new light on how the forgery was done. But he thinks there is little doubt Dawson was the perpetrator.
 
"He is the only person who is always on site every time a find is made," Russell said. "And when he died in 1916, Piltdown Man died with him."
 
Russell is author of the new book "The Piltdown Man Hoax: Case Closed" — though he doubts speculation about the century-old fraud will stop.
 
"People love conspiracy theories," he said. "And this is one of the biggest scientific hoaxes of all time."
 
Whoever was behind it, the hoax delayed consensus on human origins, leading some scientists to question the authenticity of later finds because they did not fit with Piltdown Man.
 
Stringer said Piltdown Man stands as a warning to scientists always to be on their guard — especially when evidence seems to back up their theories.
 
"There was a huge gap in evidence and Piltdown at the time neatly filled that gap," he said. "It was what people expected to be found. In a sense you could say it was manufactured to fit the scientific agenda.
 
"That lesson of Piltdown is always worth learning — when something seems too good to be true, maybe it is."

http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-seek-solve-mystery-piltdown-man-181331393.html

History's Biggest Scientific Fraud Goes Under the Microscope
By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer | LiveScience.com – Wed, Dec 12, 2012.. .

 
It's a detective story with a century-old crime: The forgery of a supposed "missing link" in human evolution that went undetected for decades.
 
Now, researchers are set on identifying the long-dead culprits responsible for the famous Piltdown Man hoax — involving forged bones said to belong to an early human — and teasing out their motives.
 
Writing in this week's issue of the journal Nature, Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, London, explains why he and his colleagues are still investigating a mystery that began 100 years ago.
 
"Personally, I am intrigued by the question of whether the hoax was driven by scientific ambition or by more jocular or vindictive motives," Stringer wrote. He and his colleagues plan to test the forged bones from the Piltdown case with modern methods, aiming to find out who most likely made them and why. [The 6 Greatest Hoaxes in History]
 
History of a hoax
 
The Piltdown Hoax is one of the most successful scientific frauds in history. In December 1912, British paleontologist Arthur Smith Woodward and amateur antiquarian Charles Dawson announced to the world that they'd found an amazing early human fossil in Piltdown, England. The curious specimen had a humanlike skull with an apelike jaw. Given the scientific name Eoanthropus dawsoni, it was more commonly called Piltdown Man.
 
Dawson and Woodward also reported that alongside Piltdown Man were a number of other stunning finds: stone tools, fossilized mammals and even an elephant bone. In 1916, Dawson claimed to have found more remains at a second site nearby.
 
According to Stringer's telling, some scientists did question the Piltdown Man bonanza discovery. They didn't immediately cry fraud, but suspected the fossil deposits had simply been mixed together over time, suggesting the ape jaw and humanlike skull weren't actually associated. [Rumor or Reality: The Creatures of Cryptozoology]
 
But it wasn't until the 1950s that Piltdown Man was exposed for the fraud it was. Chemical studies found the fossil to be less than 50,000 years old, not 1 million years as Dawson and Woodward claimed. Further testing showed the skull was likely from a modern human and the jaw probably from a modern orangutan.
 
Whodunnit?           

The question is, who stained the bones to match each other and filed the teeth to appear more human?
 
That's the mystery Stringer and his colleagues hope to solve with radiocarbon dating, DNA testing and other molecular studies. If the researchers can pin down the origins of the bones used to make the faked fossils, Stringer wrote, they may be able to figure out which archaeologist on the project was responsible.
 
For example, if faked fossils from both the Piltdown site and Dawson's second site match up, the amateur probably did it, as he was the only discoverer of the second site, Stringer said. Dawson's motivation likely would have been scientific ambition and the desire to be accepted among the elite, Stringer added.
 
Though 12 suspects in total have been accused in the hoax, there are three particularly likely suspects, other than Dawson. Woodward is one, as is Woodward's assistant Martin Hinton, a zoologist who was found after his death in 1961 to possess a collection of stained and altered bones. A Jesuit priest, Teilhard de Chardin, who discovered a tooth at Piltdown, may also have been involved.
 
Even the famous have not escaped suspicion. British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, famous for his Sherlock Holmes mysteries, has been accused of being mixed up in the hoax, according to the BBC. Doyle lived near Piltdown and was an archaeological society member. He wrote about ancient apes in his novel "The Lost World" and could have been inspired to fool the scientific community because of their mockery of one of his great passions, spiritualism. (Doyle also believed in fairies.)
 
A century-old mystery may hardly seem fresh, but Stringer sees the case as an important milestone in the history of science. The Piltdown hoax likely made scientists less willing to accept real early hominin fossils such as Astralopithecus africanus, also known as "Lucy," Stringer wrote. But the hoax also shows that even if it takes time, science will eventually ferret out the truth, he said.
 
"Regardless of who was responsible, the Piltdown hoax is a stark reminder to scientists that if something seems too good to be true, then perhaps it is," Stringer wrote.

http://news.yahoo.com/historys-biggest-scientific-fraud-goes-under-microscope-180419472.html