| Description | This series contains correspondence, papers, drawings, photographs and newscuttings relating to the discovery and controversy over the Piltdown skull. The series is an artificial one, containing papers drawn from the departmental correspondence, the Keeper's miscellaneous files, and the Anthropology correspondence files.
Many of the files have detailed lists of contents |
| AdminHistory | Parts of a human skull, mandible and a canine tooth were discovered in Pliocene gravels near Piltdown Common in Sussex by Charles Dawson (1864-1916), an amateur fossil collector, between 1908 and 1912. The specimens, together with associated fossils and implements, were presented to the British Museum (Natural History) in 1913, and were the subject of intense research by, among others, Arthur Smith Woodward (1864-1944), who was Keeper of Geology from 1901 to 1924. In 1949 Kenneth Page Oakley (1911-1981) used chemical tests to show that the skull was not as ancient as the associated fossils, and in 1953 it was demonstrated that the skull, mandible and tooth were fakes. The jawbone was that of an orangutan, with its teeth artificially ground down. The cranial bones were unusually thik human bones which had been artificially stained. Fossil animals remained also found at the site had been planted to suggest that the deposit contained remains of animals living prior to the Ice Age. In spite of research and speculation, the identity of the forger has not been proved.
References:
Spencer, F, 1990. Piltdown, a scientific forgery. Natural History Museum and Oxford University Press
Spencer, F, 1990. The Piltdown papers, 1908-1955. Natural History Museum and Oxford University Press.
Piltdown Man, Anthropology Leaflet 3, May 1962 BM(NH)
Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), Geology, vol.2, No.6, 1955 |