Piltdown Forgery Proof Ignored
The Jaw of the Piltdown Man (with five plates)
Notes: The Piltdown Man was an anthropological hoax in which it was announced in 1908 that a new species of early human had been discovered. The fossils, likely assembled from a variety of specimens by Charles Dawson, attracted significant attention and many papers and books were written about them. The fraud was only conclusively proven in the 1950s.
However, in this paper the curator for mammals at the US National Museum, correctly concludes that the Piltdown jawbone belonged to an ape, not a human. His and others' arguments against the authenticity of the Piltdown fossils were ignored for decades.
Published as Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. 65, no. 12 (publication 2376). 31 pages plus five leaves of black-and-white plates.
Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing). A very good copy with a bit of loss at the spine. Some pages unopened.
Publication: Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1915.
Item No: #306945
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