"missing link."
Fame and fortune awaited the scientist who found the
link proving Darwin right: that man evolved from a
monkey.
In 1912, success! In a gravel pit
near Piltdown in East Sussex, there was found the
cranium of a man with the jaw of an ape.
Evolution skeptics were pilloried,
and three English scientists were knighted for
validating Piltdown Man.
It wasn't until
1953, after generations of biology students had been
taught about Piltdown Man, that closer inspection
discovered that the cranium belonged to a medieval
Englishman, the bones had been dyed to look older and
the jaw belonged to an orangutan whose teeth had been