![]() Oakley discovered that the fossils were probably less than 50,000 years old, not nearly old enough to be from a species with such ape-like features.įurther research proved that the skull and jaw fragments actually came from two different species, a human and an ape, probably an orangutan. Instead, they suggested that the jaw and teeth became human-like before the evolution of a large brain.Īs the discrepancies became too many to ignore and as new dating technology emerged, investigations on the Piltdown fossils recommenced.Īt the Natural History Museum in the late 1940s, Kenneth Oakley ran a series of fluorine tests that made use of fluorine's tendency to accumulate in calcium-containing organic matter such as bones and teeth. However, none of these discoveries showed the large brain and ape-like jaw of Piltdown Man. In the 40 years since the original 1912 announcement of Piltdown Man, increasing numbers of ancient human fossils have been discovered, most notably from Africa, China, and Indonesia, but also from Asia and Europe. So, they decided that the evidence added up to an early human relative who lived about 500,000 years ago. The jawbone, ape-like but with human-looking teeth, linked the skull with its supposed evolutionary ancestors. It suggested an early human with a large brain, indicating a level of intelligence that set it clearly apart from the apes. The findings during excavations at Piltdown, England included a piece of a thick human-like skull in Pleistocene gravel beds, a jawbone with two teeth, and a variety of animal fossils and primitive stone tools.īelieving the skull fragments and jawbone to be from the same individual, Smith Woodward made a reconstruction. News & World Report was the first to refer to the Archaeoraptor Liaoningensis forgery as the case of the Piltdown Chicken, alluding to the infamous Piltdown Man hoax of 1912.Įarly in 1912, Charles Dawson, an amateur archaeologist, and Arthur Smith Woodward, Keeper of Geology at the Natural History Museum, joined forces to follow what they termed "evidence of the evolutionary 'missing link' between apes and humans". National Geographic published an admission of its mistake in March 2000 and a fuller analysis of how it had been duped in October of that year. The result was the now-famous “missing link” that allegedly had the body of a primitive bird with the teeth and the tail of a terrestrial dinosaur. Immediately, he realized that the Archaeoraptor was a fraud.įollowing thorough research, Xing came to the conclusion that the bottom portion of the "Archaeoraptor" composite came from a legitimate feathered dromaeosaurid now known as Microraptor, and the upper portion came from a previously-known primitive bird called Yanornis.Īrchaeoraptor actually “evolved” in a Chinese farmhouse where homemade paste was used to glue together two completely different fossils. ![]() Sometime later, Xu Xing, a Chinese scientist who had initially helped to identify the fossil, found a second fossil containing an exact mirror-image duplicate of the Archaeoraptor's tail, but it was attached to the body of a different fossil. ![]() The supposed "missing link fossil" was named "Archaeoraptor liaoningensis." On October 15, 1999, The National Geographic Society held a press conference to announce the awesome discovery of a 125-million-year-old fossil in northeastern China which appeared to be the long-sought missing link between dinosaurs and birds. There is no accurate information about how this fraud was finally discovered, but the Fiji mermaid will be present in the top 10 cryptozoology frauds. More likely, she perished when Kimball's museum burned down in the early 1880s. But this is unlikely, since she should have been at Kimball's Boston museum at that time. Second, the famous mermaid was constructed with half of the skeleton of a monkey (torso and head) sewn to the back half of a fish and then covered in papier-mâché, and Barnum knew it.Īccording to one theory, the Fiji mermaid was destroyed when Barnum's museum burned down in 1865. He was Barnum's accomplice and this had all been done to give the mermaid an appearance of scientific respectability. In fact, there was no such thing as the British Lyceum of Natural History. Throughout all of this, the deception of the public had been two-fold. In August 1842, huge crowds showed up for the exhibit. Barnum distributed ten thousand copies of a pamphlet about seductive mermaids throughout the city. Griffin agreed to exhibit it for a week at Concert Hall on Broadway. Griffin to display the mermaid at his museum. ![]() Griffin, who was a member of the British Lyceum of Natural History, arrived in New York City bearing a real mermaid that was supposedly caught near the Fiji Islands in the South Pacific. In mid-July 1842, an English gentleman named Dr.
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