Question
Imagine you have found the remains of what could be the earliest human ever discovered. Who would you take with you to help excavate the fossils at the site?
Piltdown man
This is the field in Sussex where Charles Dawson and Arthur Smith Woodward unearthed the Piltdown bones. Click the screen to find out how they carried out their field work. Then compare it with an excavation today.
3. In the field | Dawson and Woodward
Charles Dawson
©The Natural History Museum
Dawson was an amateur geologist. His experience was mostly in finding and recovering fossils rather than interpreting them. Several months after he began looking at the site at Piltdown, he invited his friend Arthur Smith Woodward to join him to see what else they could find. As Keeper of Geology at the Natural History Museum, Woodward's field of expertise was in fossils of vertebrate animals, particularly fish. Until this point, Woodward had little expertise in human remains.
References
- Discovering fossils:
general information about fossil collecting in the UK - The scientific method:
explored as part of the Museum's Darwin Centre experience
