A fake 'missing link' skull fooled scientists for over 40 years
In 1912, bone fragments presented as an early human ancestor's skull turned up in a Piltdown, England gravel pit and were hailed as a major fossil find. Doubts appeared almost immediately, but the fraud wasn't conclusively exposed until 1953, when tests showed it was a modern human cranium paired with a filed-down orangutan jaw, chemically stained to look ancient. A 2016 review pinned the hoax on amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson.