Piltdown man

Piltdown man (Eoanthropus dawsoni), fraudulent human ancestor whose “remains” were found (1908–15) under Piltdown Common, Sussex, United Kingdom. These consisted of a skull with an apelike jaw but a large, human cranium and teeth worn down unlike those of any extant ape, surrounded by fossil animals that indicated an early Pleistocene date. In 1953 the fraud was exposed: The skull was human but relatively recent; the even more recent jaw was that of an orangutan; the teeth had been filed down by hand; and the fossil animals were not of British origin. The remains had been artificially stained to increase confusion. The hoax has been attributed to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, among others.