These are the fossils and artefacts that caused such a stir at the beginning of the twentieth century. Visit the different areas below to compare how the fossils were examined at the time of Piltdown with how they would be studied today.
Charles Dawson and Arthur Smith Woodward discovered these fossils at Piltdown in Sussex in 1912. Among them were the fossils from Piltdown Man, said to have lived 500,000 years ago and hailed as the 'missing link'.
1. Jaw: A dark brown jaw with two unusually flat molar teeth. It is the same colour as the human skull pieces.
2. Animal fossils: Found near to the human remains. They included many fragments of teeth, a deer antler, two large mammal bones and a sea urchin.
3. Skull: Several pieces of an unusually thick human skull.
4. Flints: Chipped flints that might have been used as crude tools.
Their discovery came 50 years after Darwin published his theory of evolution, just when many people were beginning to think about our ancestors and question what kind of creature might have bridged the gap between apes and us. The only evidence we had of early humans was the skull cap of Java Man, thought to have lived 700,000 years ago, and the jaw of Heidelberg Man, estimated to have lived about 500,000 years ago.
