'''Piltdown Man''' was a notorious hoax perpetrated early in 20th century [[Great Britain]], in which a medieval human skull was combined with the lower jaw of an [[orangutan]] and subsequently "found" in a gravel pit in the near the village of Piltdown, England. Hailed as the "[[missing link]]" between man and ape-like species by promoters of [[evolution]] for decades, Piltdown man was exposed as a fraud only through later scientific testing and simple observation. The refusal of the discoverer to allow independent scrutiny of his claims enabled this fraud to persist '''''for over forty years'''''. | '''Piltdown Man''' was a notorious hoax perpetrated early in 20th century [[Great Britain]], in which a medieval human skull was combined with the lower jaw of an [[orangutan]] and subsequently "found" in a gravel pit in the near the village of Piltdown, England. Hailed as the "[[missing link]]" between man and ape-like species by promoters of [[evolution]] for decades, Piltdown man was exposed as a fraud only through later scientific testing and simple observation. The refusal of the discoverer to allow independent scrutiny of his claims enabled this fraud to persist '''''for over forty years'''''. |