Piltdown man

Some people started to have doubts about whether the Piltdown jaw was even human. Click on the picture to find out how scientists interpreted the jaw and compare it with the way we might interpret it today.

2. Examining the teeth | X-rays

X-ray of Piltdown Man teeth
©The Natural History Museum

X-ray of chimpanzee teeth
©The Natural History Museum

Dentist Arthur Underwood X-rayed the teeth in the Piltdown jaw. He knew that the roots of ape teeth looked very different to the roots of human teeth. To discover whether the Piltdown teeth really belonged to an early human, he needed to X-ray the jaw to look at the shape of the roots of the teeth. He compared the X-ray with one of a chimpanzee's jaw.

Underwood thought the roots on the chimpanzee jaw X-ray looked much straighter than those in the Piltdown jaw.

Question

What else would you like to see before you decide whether or not these teeth belong to an ape or a human?

References

• Scanning electron microscopy (SEM):
  at the Natural History Museum
• How the SEM works:
  from the Museum of Science
• Darwin Centre In-site:
  the use of scale in scientific study