Science Fair Project Encyclopedia Dawson claimed to have
discovered an ancient hominid skull in Piltdown quarry, near
Uckfield in Sussex in England, and gave it the Latin name
reproduced above ("Dawson's Dawn Man" in translation). The find
was written up by mainly British paleontologists as the 'missing
link' between ape and man, seeming as it did to feature a human-
like cranium and an ape-like jaw. There was considerable
scepticism until a second similar skull (Piltdown II) was
uncovered in 1915. However, it became increasingly difficult to
reconcile Piltdown Man with later (genuine) hominid finds and by
the late 1930s it was effectively ignored. Following fluorine
absorption tests in 1949 and redating of the Piltdown gravel
beds it was finally revealed as a hoax on 21 November 1953.
Piltdown Man turned out to be literally half-ape, half-man: it
consisted of the skull of a medieval human, the 500-year-old
lower jaw of a Sarawak orangutan and chimpanzee fossil teeth.
The appearance of age had been created by