Fossil finder name
Mary Anning: Female Fossil Finder
Born in a time when misogyny and Georgian masculinity was rampant, little Mary Anning contributed extraordinary discoveries to the scientific world. Unfortunately, during her time, and after, Mary never got credit where credit was due. Although society is only just started to catch up on attributing her work, Mary Anning is now known as a pioneer in fossil collecting and discovery; setting the course for British paleontology as we know it today.
In 1799, Mary Anning was born to a very low-income family in Lyme Regis, Dorset, England. Mary and her brother Joseph were the only children of nine or ten to survive until adulthood. To further attribute her extraordinary life, at just 15 months, Mary survived a lightning strike that killed three women, included the one holding her.
When struggling to bring money in, her father took to fossil collecting on what we now call the Jurassic Coast. He brought along Mary, aged 5, to help him in his hunt.
During a time when girls were not encouraged in their formal education, Mary taught herself geology and anatomy through her work as a fossil finder with her father. To supplement the income that never seemed to be there, her father and Mary would clean, polish and sell these fossils to tourists visiting the area.
After her father died in 1810, her brother went to work as an apprentice, and Mary continued finding and selling her fossils to supplement income for the household. Joseph would often join Mary in her hunt for fossils.
Only a year after her father’s death, in 1811, Mary and Joseph discovered the fossilized skull of an ichthyosaur. It took months of painstaking uncovering work for Mary to dig out the remaining 17-foot long skeleton, but she succeeded. Sold for £23 (about £2200 in today’s money), this skeleton still sits at London’s Natural History Museum.
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This incredible discovery came at a time when the theory of extinction was only just making waves in the world of science.
During this time, Cabinets of Curiosities were flourishing in Georgian England and tourists were flocking to the coasts. Due to frequent discoveries, society’s interest in fossils was constantly being fueled by new finds. Even museums were struggling to keep up with the demand for fossil displays.
Mary’s next ‘big’ discovery wouldn’t be until 1823 when she uncovered the complete skeleton of a Plesiosaurus – a 9-foot swimming reptile – a specimen that had never been discovered before. This find is said to be her most important scientific find.
In 1828 Mary uncovered a pterosaur (later called a Pterodactyl), which was the first one discovered outside of Germany. Mary also spearheaded the study of coprolites or fossilized poop.
Mary easily sold many of her fossil finds, however, she and her family still endured monetary hardships throughout her life.
Although Mary was known to have discovered significant geological funds, she never got the recognition she so justly deserved in this Georgian age.
Being a woman in science, Mary was never given proper reference to her discoveries.
In 1824, Lady Harriet Sivester, met Mary and wrote in her own diary,
. . . the extraordinary thing in this young woman is that she has made herself so thoroughly acquainted with the science that the moment she finds any bones she knows to what tribe they belong. She fixes the bones on a frame with cement and then makes drawings and has them engraved. . . It is certainly a wonderful instance of divine favour – that this poor, ignorant girl should be so blessed, for by reading and application she has arrived to that degree of knowledge as to be in the habit of writing and talking with professors and other clever men on the subject, and they all acknowledge that she understands more of the science than anyone else in this kingdom.
Lady Harriet Sivester
Scientists from all over would visit Mary in Lyme Regis and examine the fossils she had found, but never did they credit her with the discovery.
She is known to have said,
The world has used me so unkindly, I fear it has made me suspicious of everyone.
Mary Anning
While her discoveries were world-renowned, Mary reaped little (if any) monetary reward or notoriety for her hard work. In 1826, Mary and her mother opened a fossil shop in Lyme Regis to bring in income.
In 1838, after being pressured by one of her male scientist peers – who appreciated her work in the development of paleontology – Mary was granted an annual income from the British Association for the Advancement of Science and London’s Geological Society to continue her fossil-finding work. While this was a meager sum, it helped support Mary and her mother until her death at the age of 47 in 1847. Throughout her lifetime of incredible scientific discoveries, she never stopped in her search for fossils and contributing to the scientific world.
At a time when the world was opening up to the age of extinction theories, Mary’s fossil-hunting endeavors and her fossil-selling profession fueled public interest in fossils, geology, and paleontology.
Her work in science were important contributors to the understanding of the world’s life and history.
Next, read about Gertrude Bell, Al Khatun: Queen of the Desert, an adventurer, spy, archaeologist and powerful political force who travelled into the uncharted Arabian desert and was recruited by British Military Intelligence to help reshape the Middle East after World War I!
Ashley Winder
Ashley Winder has been Freelance Writing for clients who have forgone the written word for over 3 years. She provides ghostwritten columns, content writing, and blog editing services. Her educational background in museums and art galleries have given her a strong base from which to approach many cultural, historical and artistic topics. As a Contributing editor at Mainly Museums and a resident blog contributor at Girl Museum, Inc, Ashley has kept alive her work in museums and history whilst simultaneously pursuing her passion of traveling the globe.
www.ashleywinder.com/
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The Leakey Foundation | Fossil Finders: Heselon Mukiri
Published on 11/22/2019
CATEGORIES: Guest Post, Fossil Finders
Fossil Finders is a series devoted to telling the stories of the people behind important fossil discoveries.
In this installment, Leakey Foundation Fellow Carol Broderick brings us the story of Heselon Mukiri who made several important discoveries and worked with Louis Leakey since the beginning of Leakey’s career.
By Carol Broderick
In previous articles, it would seem that Kamoya Kimeu’s Hominid Gang learned most if not all of their paleoanthropology knowledge and techniques from the Leakeys, but the Leakeys did not pass on this information alone. In the late 1920s, Louis Leakey hired an assistant by the name of Heselon Mukiri. Mukiri was already Leakey’s friend. When Leakey was a boy living in Africa with his missionary parents and both boys were 13, they shared in initiation rites that would make them members of the same Kikuyu Mukanda age group. “My Kikuyu training taught me this,” Leakey wrote later in a National Geographic article, “if you have reason to believe that something should be in a given spot but you don’t find it, you must not conclude that it isn’t there.
Rather, you must conclude that your powers of observation are faulty.” On Leakey’s return from Cambridge, he hired several of his Kikuyu acquaintances to work with him in Kenya. Heselon Mukiri was one of them.
Kanam, Kenya
Heselon Mukiri was also included in Louis’ Fourth East African Archaeological Expedition in 1934-35 in Kanam, Kenya. It was there, in the early 1930s, that Leakey had discovered the lower jaw of a hominid he called Homo kanamensis. This was the first new Homo designation Louis bestowed on one of his fossil finds, and its status was not lost on anthropologists across the globe. It was on this excursion that Peter Kent, a geologist on the expedition, referred to Mukiri as a “treasure” as he was already trained to not only look for fossils but to excavate them. While Mukiri attempted to find the original site of his earlier find, unsuccessfully to his great dismay, Mukiri and the other workers were already busy looking for new fossils.
It was at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania that Mary Nicol and Heselon Mukiri first met, and he was wary of this new woman in the field.
The staff had all worked with and respected Frida Leakey, Louis’ first wife, and both their religious views and those of most of the world frowned on casual relationships. But Mary’s serious commitment to and passion for paleontology and the skills she brought to the field won even Mukiri’s respect. After a short while in the field, she wrote, “he now accepted me as a worthwhile member of the team and as someone who might even be worthy of Louis.”
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Mukiri continued to work with the Leakeys in the field. In 1948, on the second British-Kenya Miocene Research Expedition, he was there when Mary made an exciting discovery: a skull containing the face of a Proconsul – the first Proconsul skull containing such complete features excavated in East Africa. She and Heselon worked as a team reconstructing this exciting new face. He carefully searched each grain of sand, and as he found pieces of the skull, some incredibly tiny, he gave them to Mary Leakey.
She worked on completing the complicated reconstruction, one of her special talents. Years later she wrote, “This was a wildly exciting find which would delight human paleontologists all over the world, for the size and the shape of a hominid [sic] skull of this age, so vital to evolutionary studies, could hitherto only be guessed at. Ours were the first eyes ever to see a Proconsul face.” As Mary Leakey left to present her find to the world, Mukiri was left to manage the staff and to continue excavating the site.
Heselon Mukiri, leader of Louis Leakey’s scientific staff. Photo: The Leakey Foundation Archive.
By the mid-1940s, Mukiri was clearly the leader of the group of workers vital to the success of the search for hominids. In 1949, Louis Leakey decided it was time to list Mukiri’s name as a formal member on the Kenya Miocene expedition permit. Although everyone who knew and worked with the Leakeys understood that this was an informal arrangement that had been going on for years, Africans were prohibited from excavating a site without the permit holder there.
Sonia Mary Cole, a British anthropologist, author of Leakey’s Luck and one of Mary Leakey’s closest friends, recognized the rarity of Mukiri’s management position, calling him the “first ‘native’ permit holder.” She described him in this way: “Undisputed boss, as always dignified and rather unapproachable but with a well-developed sense of humor, he was respected by the others. Few could rival his eye for a fossil or his skill with plaster of Paris.”
In 1947, at an island in Lake Victoria called Rusinga Island, Mukiri was with Mary, Louis, and Jonathan Leakey, and a small group of Kikuyu workers when Louis discovered another Proconsul jaw of a Miocene ape, which along with further similar discoveries, in 1993 was given a new species name: Proconsul heseloni. It was recognized as the fourth species of this famous hominoid. How much the Leakeys and the paleontological world valued Heselon Mukiri’s work can be found in this unique designation.
Mukiri was not only an excavation expert and the leader of the scientific team; he also excelled in the role of a fossil finder.
In 1959 at Olduvai he discovered a hominid tooth in Bed l. It was on this same expedition that Mary discovered the skull of what would become known as Zinjanthropus boisei, (later assigned to another group, Australopithecus boisei) or Zinj, one of the most exciting paleoanthropological finds in history. In 1965, a Tanzanian postage stamp of Zinj was released. Mukiri’s image appears on that stamp, along with Mary and Louis Leakey and Dr. and Mrs. Melville Grosvenor of the National Geographic Society.
In the early ’60s, Louis Leakey became interested in a Miocene site at Lake Victoria called Fort Ternan. Because of the recent finds at Olduvai, Leakey realized that the world was waiting for more discoveries at this site, and he asked Mukiri to manage operations at the Fort Ternan site. Over the years, Mukiri discovered numerous unique and interesting animals there, many totally new to the scientific community. At the time, the Leakeys were busy finalizing the new Centre for Prehistory and Paleontology on the Coryndon museum grounds in Kenya and working on their Olduvai finds.
Louis Leakey checked in, periodically, and it was on one of those visits that Heselon handed him a diminutive metal box that held two pieces of a primate’s upper jaw and a lower molar. It was later dated at 14 million years, a period of time with few hominoid fossils on record. Of special interest to Leakey was the slight depression below the eye socket in the cheekbone, a hominid trait. He was sure this hominoid may have been a branch, although a distant one, on our family tree. He named this ape Kenyapithecus wickeri after Fred Wicker, on whose land it was discovered. At this site, Mukiri’s crew also discovered new species of giraffe, mastodon, and rhinoceros. In 1962 the site was reopened, and several teeth, a section of the lower jaw, and a limb bone of Kenyapithecus were also discovered. Later, while working with the Leakeys at Olduvai Gorge, many pig fossils were found, two later named after Mukiri: Mesochoerus heseloni and Promesochoerus mukiri.
Heselon Mukiri retired in 1968.
At his retirement, he was awarded a diploma and $1,000 by the National Geographic Society. Shortly after he retired Mary wrote: “The African staff, under the direction of Heselon Mukiri, deserve our sincere thanks for their consistently high standard of work. A number have shown outstanding ability, not only in excavation but also in recognizing fragmentary hominid material and in developing delicate fossils.”
Heselon Mukiri died in 1984. Over the many decades of the Leakeys’ expeditions, as Kikuyu and Kamba staff came and went, Mukiri stayed, fostering the transfer of knowledge to and from the fossil finders to the scientists as he played a vital role in the search for our ancestors.
Editor’s note: We are seeking additional photos of Heselon Mukiri. If you have one or know where we can find one, please contact [email protected]
Category: : Guest Post, Fossil Finders
SUBJECT(S): fossil finders
A female for a million Paleontologist Jorn Hurum about his sensational discovery: Books: Culture: Lenta.
ru A few years ago, the world spread the news that did not leave indifferent even people from science who are far from science: the skeleton of a small ancient primate, bought by the Norwegian paleontologist Jorn Hurum from an unknown collector, is the missing link in the evolutionary chain between animal and human. The collector asked the scientist for a copy of $ 1 million. The paleontologist named his discovery in honor of his daughter - Ida. After Ida was in the hands of scientists, they managed to find out that in front of them was the skeleton of a young female primate (less than a year old). Judging by the remnants of food found in her stomach, her habitat was the crowns of trees, where she ate leaves and fruits. Paleontologists have suggested that Ida fell from a tree and injured her left paw (there is a trace of a fused fracture on the skeleton). At some point during the watering, Ida fell into the lake and fell deep into the silt. That is why her body has survived almost without damage for 47 million years.
Ida has become not only the subject of heated debate among scientists, but also the heroine of the children's book “Ida. A look from the past”, which Hurum wrote together with Torstein Helleve (in Russian, it was published by the publishing house “Walk to History”, translated by Svetlana Karpushina). Lenta.ru columnist Natalya Kochetkova met with Jorn Hurum.
Lenta.ru: The story of how Ida came to you is almost a detective story, isn't it?
Jorn Hurum
Photo: David Wimsett / Zuma / Globallookpress.com
Jorn Hurum: Yes, it was long and difficult. Ida was found in the early 1980s in Messel, a village near Frankfurt am Main. But who exactly is unknown. Paleontological excavations were officially banned at that time, which did not mean, of course, that no one was engaged in this. Subsequently, the German government ruled that none of the fossil seekers should have been punished for this. For me, this story began when in 2006 I was offered to buy Ida.
For a lot of money, as far as I know.
The salesperson wanted a million dollars. When I saw the fossil, I knew it was beautiful. That this is the best copy that I have ever met in my life.
For an unqualified reader, can you explain on what grounds you made such a conclusion?
As soon as I saw that the fossil was filled with plastic, I immediately understood where it came from and determined its age. The fact is that in Messel there is such a rock - oil shale - which, as soon as it comes into contact with air, instantly dries up and crumbles. Therefore, a special conservation technology has been devised for fossils from this area.
A layer of shale three to four centimeters thick is left around the fossil. To keep the water in the slate, it is packaged in plastic. The fossil itself is dried with an ordinary hair dryer. Then the plastic is removed from the slate, and a layer of epoxy coating or polyester is applied over the skeleton no more than one centimeter thick.
Illustration from the book “Ida. A look from the past”
This offer was made to me in Germany at a special fair where fossils are sold. I returned to Norway and went to the director of my museum (Natural History Museum in Oslo - approx. "Tapes.ru" ). I said that I had come across the best fossil of my life and I didn't think the museum had the money to buy it. The director said that he would try to persuade the board of trustees to buy this copy. And we managed to persuade him. We managed to drop the price a lot and paid a lot, but not a million. (Laughs)
I contacted the best small mammal paleontologists, specifically Messel. And in June 2007, we bought this fossil.
But as I understand it, it was only half of the skeleton?
Yes. We started by taking an X-ray of our acquisition, because there are many fakes on the market and it is difficult to determine by eye whether the skeleton is genuine or not. As soon as the news about our find spread in professional circles, one American paleontologist immediately responded, who said that in America he had seen a skeleton similar to ours, in which part was fake and part was real.
The skeleton was cut lengthwise. We had the left side, and the right side was in America. Also in America was part of the head, shoulder, part of the thigh and tail. Fake parts were stuck to this to make the exhibit look like a complete skeleton.
We took an x-ray of what was in America, our unit and made a three-dimensional model in which we connected the two parts. It became clear that this is one creature. We were even given the American part for the duration of our research, but then we had to return it to America, so physically it is there again.
Thanks to the American part of the skeleton, we have the exact date of purchase of Ida. The fact is that in 1995 UNESCO included Messel - the place where Ida was found - in the list of world heritage sites. After that, no excavations were carried out there. That is, all samples from Messel, excavated later than 1995 years is illegal fishing. Therefore, it was important for us to have proof that Ida was excavated before 1995.
I know that after you had Ida's skeleton, you assembled a working group of the most prominent paleontologists in the world and they came to the conclusion that Ida is the missing link in the evolutionary chain in the transition from animal to human. However, other scientists have questioned these findings.
When we published our data, we formulated it as follows: evolution at some point split into two branches. On the one hand, there were monkeys, on the other, lemurs. They are also called semi-monkeys. It happened 63 million years ago. Ida is 47 million years old. That is, by the time of her birth, this separation had already occurred. And some features of her skeleton indicate that she is on that branch, which then went to the monkeys. And some scientists, especially American ones, find other traits and say that Ida belongs to the lemurs. Therefore, in our children's book, we wrote that this is the case when scientists have not yet agreed - they have two different points of view.
Illustration from the book “Ida. A look from the past»
Which one are you leaning towards?
I can't be 100 percent sure of either version. The fact is that we do not have other such preserved and equally ancient fossils. We have nothing to compare it to. Until we find something similar, we will not be able to resolve this dispute.
When we look at Ida, at what size it was, how it could move, at the features of its structure, we can make an assumption that our ancestors 47 million years ago could look like this. But it cannot be ruled out that it was a side, dead-end branch of development.
It is not uncommon for scientists to argue about concepts. But not every scientist writes children's books in parallel. How did the idea for the Ida book come about?
A children's book is to blame for my becoming a paleontologist. There was a Norwegian writer, originally a teacher, who wrote a book before World War II called Olaf and the Animal Tales. And it begins with this description: a boy walks along the road, picks up and throws small pebbles.
He takes another stone, and suddenly the stone says to him in a human voice: "Don't leave me - I'm a trilobite." And this trilobite begins to tell a story. And at the age of five or six I thought a lot about who I am, where I come from, how I was born, who my ancestors were. I realized that fossils, fossils, can tell me everything that interests me.
And with the help of my trilogy - the book about Ida the first part of it - I tell children the history of mankind, because fossils are witnesses of history and can give us a lot of information.
All three books of the cycle are structured in the same way: the first part is a fictional story of the hero, the second is a scientific story about the discovery. And the third is different activities: draw, do exercises, and so on. After the book about Ida, the story goes back centuries. The second book takes the reader back another 184 million years. We are going to Svalbard (Svalbard), where huge sea lizards lived. Now you can find huge skeletons there - they are already being dug mostly by my group.
I talk about our life, how we do it all. And in the third book we move back 428 million years ago. This is a world about which we generally know very little - only that huge scorpions lived in it. (Laughs) And the hero there is a relatively small sea scorpion for this time, and there are also fish there, which are our very first ancestors, because they have a skeleton.
This trilogy is a whole. At the end of Book 3, we tell the children that they have traveled through time: a journey that all our ancestors have traveled.
Your name is known thanks to the sensational discovery of not only Ida, but also the skeleton of a huge pliosaurus. Is the second book in the trilogy about him?
Yes, I am the father of baby Ida and the giant lizard. (Laughs.) But the hero of the third book, the scorpion, was not found by us. This find is over 100 years old. It is considered the most valuable fossil in Norway, but there has never been a special book for children about it, and we decided to tell about it.
Illustration from the book “Ida. A look from the past»
Insects, even if they are large, are still rather fragile. Why did the scorpion survive?
Lucky! (laughs) But most likely the fact is that in the place where he was found, there were once reservoirs, which then dried up. And there were no small organisms that eat everything. We have specimens of insects of this time that have been bitten. But the scorpion, about which the book is, is lucky - it is completely intact. Like Ida, who inhaled methane, fell into the lake, fell deep into the silt, where there is no oxygen and, as a result, other creatures that would eat her.
Can you tell us about your other finds?
To date, we have described seven new species found on Svalbard. And for sure we will describe at least five more. You will be interested to hear this: we are quite sure that our closest relatives later moved to Siberia, so our Svalbard finds are related to what you have in Russia.
We unearthed 40 skeletons during the 8 years of the expedition. Now it will take us at least 20 years to glue it all together, to study it.
So you will stop digging?
No, no, no! (Laughs) We have a unique team, there are no others like it. Now we will accumulate so much that we will have time to retire, and even die, and scientists will continue to understand what we have dug up. As a museum employee, I cannot help but think in generations.
The Piltdown hoax
Dawson finds the skull
A hoax exposed?
After Eugène Dubois discovered Java man in the 1890s, there was a sharp increase in the number of
fossil seekers who would fill the evolutionary0093 gaps" between ancient ape-like hominids and modern Homo
. It was during this era of high expectations that the sensational discovery was made in England
- Piltdown man, a creature with a skull like a human
and a jaw like that of an ape.
B In general terms, the Piltdown story is familiar to both supporters and opponents of the Darwinian theory of human evolution.
was declared a forgery by scientists from the British Museum in the 1950s. This allowed critics of Darwin's
theory to challenge the veracity of the scientists who had included the Piltdown fossils in the
evolutionary sequence for several decades.
On the other hand, the scientists immediately pointed out that they themselves
exposed this deception. Some have looked for the culprit in Dawson, an eccentric amateur, or
in Pierre Tilgarde de Chardin, a Catholic paleontologist priest, to whom0093 there were mystical ideas about evolution, thereby forgiving the "real" scientists
who took part in the "discovery".
In a sense, one could omit the story of Piltdown and continue our review of the
paleoanthropological evidence. But a close look at
Piltdown Man and the controversy that
flared up around him will give us an excellent opportunity to
look at how facts relating to human evolution are accepted and rejected.
Contrary to the common belief that fossils speak with the highest degree of credibility,
fidelity and persuasiveness, the
intricate web of circumstances associated with any paleoanthropological discovery may preclude any simple
understanding.
Such ambiguity is especially to be expected in the case of the carefully planned deception that constitutes the Piltdown case. But as a general rule,
even "ordinary" paleoanthropological finds are surrounded by numerous layers of uncertainty. As we trace in the detailed history of the Peel-Down controversy, it becomes clear that the line between fact and deceit is very
0093 is often indistinguishable.
Dolson finds the skull.
Around 1908, Charles Dawson, a lawyer and amateur anthropologist, noticed that
country road near Piltdown in Sussex was paved with siliceous gravel.
Since Dawson was always looking for flint tools, he asked the workers and found out that
flint was brought from a mine from the nearby estate of Barkham Manor, which belonged to Mr. R. Kenward, with whom Dawson was acquainted. Dawson visited the mine and
asked two workers to pay attention to any tool or fossil that0093 who can get caught. In 1913, Dawson wrote: "During one of my
subsequent visits to the mine, one of the people handed me a small piece of an unusually thick parietal
human bone.
I immediately looked all around, but found nothing else. .. And so on, until a few years later, in August
, 1911, I visited this place and took out another, more voluminous piece, belonging to the frontal part of the same skulls." Dawson noticed that the mine produced
pieces of flint the same color as the skull fragments.
Dawson wasn't just an amateur. He was elected a member of the Geological Society, and for 30 years, as an honorary collector, he sent specimens to the British Museum. Moreover, he developed a close friendship with Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, head of the British Museum's Geological Department and member of the Royal
Society. In February 1912 Dawson wrote to Woodward in a letter to the British Museum
saying that he "came across a very ancient Pleistocene layer...0093 which, I think, promises to be very interesting... because of the part of a thick human skull
found in it. ... Pieces of a human skull that would
rival those of Homo heideibergensis.
In general, Dawson found five pieces of the
skull. To make them hard, he placed them in a solution of potassium dichromate. Saturday Woodward and Dawson, together with Pierre Tilgard
de Chardin, a student at the local Jesuit seminary, began excavations at Peel
tdowne and they were rewarded with several new discoveries. On the very first day,
, they found another part of the skull, and other finds followed.
Later Dawson wrote: “It is evident that all or most of the
human skull was smashed to smithereens by a worker who threw away the unnoticed pieces. layer I found the right half of a human lower jaw
. As far as I could tell from a tree growing 3 or 4
yards from there, it was the same place where workers
were working a few years ago when the first part of the skull was found. Dr. Woodward also excavated a non-
large portion of the occiput of the skull a yard away from where the jaw was found and approximately at the same level. The jaw was
smashed along the seam and worn away, possibly when it lay in sediment and before complete deposition.
The fragments show little or no evidence of their movement.
An incision has been preserved on the parietal part, possibly from a worker's pick. There were
found 9 parts of the skull. Five were found by Dawson alone, and the other 4 by Woodward after
he joined the excavations."
In addition to human fossils,
various mammalian fossils were found during excavations at Piltdown, including elephant teeth, sloth Stone tools were also found, some of which could be compared with
eoliths and other more advanced tools.0093 Dawson and Woodward believed that tools and bones in better condition,
including the Piltdown man fossil, date from the early Pleistocene, while others were originally part of the Pliocene formation.
In the following decades, many scientists agreed with Dawson and Woodward
that the Piltdown man fossils belonged with Early Pleistocene mammalian fossils,
synchronous with the Piltdown deposits.
But others, including Sir Arthur Kate and A.
T. Hopwood thought that fossils 9The 0093 Piltdown man belonged together with ancient Late Pleistocene
fauna that was apparently washed into the Piltdown deposits from the later
horizon.
From the beginning, the Piltdown skull was thought to be morphologically similar to
's human skull. According to Woodward, the ancient ape-like ancestors of man had a human-
skull and an ape-like jaw, such as that of Piltdown man. At a certain point, says Woodward,
evolutionary line split. One branch began to develop thick walls of the skull with large supraorbital ridges. This lineage led to Javanese
humans and Neanderthals, who had thick skull walls and large supraorbital ridges. The other branch retained smoother supraorbital ridges
while the jaw became more like a human jaw.
Thus, Woodward came up with his own theory of human evolution,
which he wanted to confirm with the fossils found, however, their
number is limited and they are fragmentary.
Today Woodward's putative
lineage is alive with the widely accepted idea that Homo sapiens sapiens and
Homo sapiens neanderthalensis are descendants of species called archaic
or early Homo sapiens sapiens. Very close to Woodward's idea is not so
Lewis Leakey's widely accepted assumption that both Homo sapiens and
Neanderthals are parallel branches of the main trunk of human evolution,
but all these supposed evolutionary genealogies ignore the above
in this book is evidence of the presence of anatomically modern humans in
periods older than the Pleistocene.
Not everyone agreed that the Piltdown jaw and
skull belonged to the same creature. Sir Ray Lancaster of the British Museum suggested that they
could belong to different creatures of different species. David Waterson,
professor of anatomy at King's College, also thought that the jaw was not a
skull. He said that the connection of the jaw to the skull is similar to the connection of the foot
chimpanzee with human leg.
If Waterson was right, then he is confronted with the fact that a skull very similar to that of a human being was very possibly from the early Pleistocene.
So, from the very beginning, some experts disagreed with the apparent incompatibility
of the human-like skull and the ape-like jaw of
Piltdown Man (Figure 9.1). Sir Grafton Elliot Smith, brain physiologist
, tried to resolve this doubt. After examining the cast,
showing features of the brain region of the Piltdown skull, Smith wrote: "We
must regard this as the most primitive and most simian known human brain; moreover, one would reasonably expect that
this skull belonged to a single being [simian-like ] lower jaw -
Tew." But according to modern scientists, the Piltdown skull is a fairly modern Homo sapiens sapiens skull that was planted by a hoaxer.
If we accept this, then it means that Smith, an illustrious specialist,
saw simian features where there were none in reality.
It was hoped that future discoveries would clarify the exact status of the Piltdown
man.
The Piltdown jaw lacked fangs, which are more pointed
in apes than in humans. Woodward thought the canine would be found by chance, and even made a model of what Piltdown Man's canine should look like.
On August 29, 1913, Tilgard de Chardin actually found a tusk in a pile of
gravel at the Piltdown site, near the place where the lower 9 was found0093 jaw. The tip of the fang has been worn away in the same way as the tip of a human fang. In addition to
, several nasal bones were found there.
By that time, Piltdown had begun to attract the attention of tourists. Visiting
explorers were politely allowed to assist in the ongoing excavations. Here
came entire carriages with members of natural history societies. Dawson even hosted a picnic at the Piltdown site for the Geological Society of London.
Dawson soon became a celebrity. Indeed, the scientific name of piltdown is 9The 0093 hominid became Eoanthropus dawsoni, meaning "man of the dawn
Dawson".
But Dawson did not enjoy his fame for long, he died in 1916.
There were still doubts that the jaw and skull of Eoantro-
belonged to the same creature, but these doubts were alleviated when Woodward reported the discovery in 1915 of a second set of fossils - about two
miles from the first Piltdown site. . Two pieces of a human skull and a resembling a human molar were found there. Second Piltdown Openings
humans helped many scientists establish that the first Piltdown skull and jaw belonged to the same creature.
But when more hominid fossils were found, the Piltdown fossils,
which had the type of Homo sapiens skull, introduced great uncertainty into the
construction of the lines of human evolution. At Zhoukoudian, researchers initially found a primitive jaw similar to that of Piltdown Man
at Peqi-
. But when at 19
the first jaw of Peking Man was found, it had a low forehead and protruding supraorbital ridges of a Pythecanthropus erectus
from Java, which together with Peking Man
is now classified as Homo erectus.
In the same decade Raymond Dard discovered the first specimens of Australopithecus in Africa. This was followed by
new finds of Australopithecus, and they, like the Javanese and Peking people,
had low foreheads and prominent supraorbital ridges. However, most of the Bri-
Tang anthropologists decided that Australopithecus was an ape-like creature
and not a human ancestor.
But new discoveries in Africa, made after the Second World War by Robert Broome, forced British scientists to change their opinion about Australopithecus
and recognize it as the ancestor of man. So what was to be done now with Pit-
Man, who was thought to be the same age as the Australopithecus
finds that had already been made by that time?
Fake exposed?
Meanwhile, an English dentist named Alvan Marston was
harassing English scientists with Piltdown Man,
arguing that the fossils were somewhat suspicious. In 1935, Marston found a human skull at Swanscombe, accompanied by fossilized bones of 26 species of Middle Pleistocene 90,093 animals.
Marston wanted his discoveries to be hailed as the discovery of "the oldest Englishman himself," and so he disputed the age of the Piltdown fossils.0093 lost.
In 1949 Marston persuaded Kenneth P. Oakley of the British Museum to test both the Swanscombe and Piltdown fossils
using the newly developed
fluorine dating method. The Swanscombe skull had 90,093 the same fluorine content as the bones of fossil animals from the same 90,093 site. This confirmed the Middle Pleistocene date of this skull.
The test results for the Piltdown samples were simply confusing.
It should be mentioned that Oakley himself doubted the authenticity of Piltdown Man
. Oakley and Hoskins, co-authors of a 1950 report on the
fluoride test, wrote that "the anatomical features of the eoanthrope (assuming that the material represents a single in Africa, made us
expect an ancient Pleistocene hominid."
Oakley tested the Piltdown fossils to determine
whether the skull and jaw of Piltdown Man really belonged to the same
creature.
The fluorine content in 4 Piltdown bones ranged from 0.1 to
0.4%. The fluorine content of the jaw was 0.2%, suggesting that it was
related to the skull. Bones from the second Piltdown locality gave 90,093 similar results. Oakley concluded that the Piltdown bones belonged to the Rice-
c-Wurm interglacial, which puts their age at 75,000-125,000 years.
This is a much more recent age than the Early Pleistocene date,0093 originally attributed to the Piltdown fossils, but still, it is anomalously old for a modern type skull in England. According to modern theory
, Homo sapiens sapiens appeared in Africa about 100,000 years ago, and
only much later (about 30,000 years ago) moved to Europe.
Oakley's report did not fully satisfy Marston, who was convinced that
the Piltdown jaw and skull belonged to different creatures. Based on
knowledge of medicine and dentistry, Marston concluded that the skull with
with sutures belonged to a developed human, while the jaw with underdeveloped molars
belonged to an undeveloped monkey.
He also felt that the dark
color of the claws, which was taken as a sign of their great age, was due
to the fact that Dawson, in order to harden them, dipped them in a solution of
potassium dichromate.
Marston's ongoing campaign for Piltdown fossil
eventually attracted the attention of D.S. Weiner, an anthropologist at Oxford. Weiner
soon became convinced that there was something wrong with the Piltdown fossils. He
reported his suspicions to W. E. Le Gros Clark, Dean of the Anthropology Department at Oxford University, but he was initially skeptical.
On August 5, 1953, Weiner and Oakley met with Le Gros Clark at the British Museum
, where Oakley recovered the original Piltdown specimens from the safe, and they were now able to
examine the disputed remains. Here Weiner presented to Le Gros Clark
chimpanzee teeth, which he took from the collection of a museum, and then processed and
colored it. It was so strikingly similar to the Piltdown molar that
Le Gros Clark commissioned a full study of the Piltdown fossils.
A second fluorine test was carried out on the Piltdown human fossils,
now using new methods. It has now turned out,
, that the fluorine content in the three pieces of the Piltdown skull is 0.1%. But
the fluorine content in the Piltdown jaw and teeth was significantly lower -
0.01-0.04%. Since the fluorine content increases over time, these
results indicate a significantly older skull compared to
jaw and teeth. This means that they could not belong to the same
being.
Looking at the two tests for fluorine given by Oakley, we see,
that the first indicates the same age of both the skull and jaw, while
the second confirms their different age. It was said that the second test was
carried out using new methods - this happened in order to get the same
0093 desired result. This sort of thing happens a lot in paleonthropology:
researchers run tests and then run them again, or improve their
methods until they get the result they want.
Then they stop.
It seems that in such cases the test is adjusted according to theoretical
expectations.
Pittledown fossils were also tested for nitrogen content.
Studying their results, Weiner found that the cranial bones contained
0.6-1.4% nitrogen, while the jaw contains 3.9%, and the
dentin of some Piltdown teeth contains 4.2-5.1%. Therefore, the test results show that
the age of the cranial fragments differs from the age of the jaw and teeth and demonstrate that they belonged to
different creatures. Modern bones contain 4-5% nitrogen, and this content increases with age. So, it turned out that the jaw and teeth were quite modern, but the skull was ancient.
Fluorine and nitrogen test results still allow
that at least the skull was part of the Pittledown deposits. But in the end, even the fragments of the skull came under suspicion.
The report from the British Museum states: "Dr. G.F.Claringbull performed X-ray crystallographic analysis of the
bones and found that their main mineral constituent,
hydroxyapatite, was partially replaced by gypsum.
Study of the chemical conditions of
in the Piltdown soils and groundwater showed that such replacement could not have occurred naturally in the Piltdown deposits.0093 Tor M.H. Hay demonstrated that such substitution occurs when semi-fossilized
bone is artificially stained with iron when placed in a strong solution of
ferrous sulfate. It is now clear that the skull bones were artificially stained
in order to fit under the deposit and "planted" in the site along with
all other finds.
Despite the facts presented in the British Museum report, it is still possible to argue that the skull was originally from the Piltdown deposits. All kus-
the skull bones were completely painted in dark iron color, while the
jaw, also called a fake, was only superficially painted. Moreover,
chemical analysis of fragments of the first skull found by Dawson showed
that they had a very high iron content - 8% compared to only
2-3% in the jaw. This suggests that the fragments of the skull acquired the coloration of iron (i.
e., the bone is completely impregnated and the iron content is 8% of the total mineral content of the bone) after a long stay in rich iron.0093 sediments at Piltdown. It turned out that the jaw, which had a superficial
coloration and a significantly lower iron content, was of a different origin.
If the skull fragments were from the Piltdown deposits and were not artificially colored
as suggested by Weiner et al, how then should the presence of
gypsum (calcium sulfate) in the skull fragments be explained? One possible explanation for
is Dawson, hardening bones with chemicals after
of their extraction, used sulphate formulations (together with potassium dichromate or
in addition to it). So part of the hydroxyapatite turned into gypsum.
Another possibility is that the plaster was collected while the skull was
in the Piltdown deposits. Scientists at the British Museum stated
that the sulfate concentration at Piltdown was too low for this.
But
M. Bowden noted that this area contains 63 parts of sulfates to
1,000,000 parts of water, and that the Piltdown sediments contain
parts of sulfates.0093 is 3.9 milligrams per 100 grams. While acknowledging that these are not high levels,
Bowdin said that they could have been much higher in the past. Note that Oakley referred to the higher
fluorine concentration in past times to explain the abnormally high fluorine content in the
human skeletons from Castenedolo.
It is important to note that there was no plaster cast in the Piltdown jaw. The fact that
gypsum is present in all skull fragments, but not in the jaw, is consistent with
hypothesis that the skull fragments were originally in the Piltdown
deposits, but the jaw was not.
The five skull fragments that Dawson found alone, prior to Woodward joining
, contain chromium. This can be explained by the well-known fact that
after extracting the fragments, Dawson placed them in potassium dichromate to make them solid.
Other skull fragments found jointly by Dawson and Woodward did not contain chromium. In the jaw, the chrome really was that,
was apparently due to iron staining when using ferrous
and potassium dichromate.
In summary, the skull could have been from the Piltdown deposits, and
it was completely saturated with iron over a long period of time. During this
same period of time, some of the calcium phosphate in the bone was
converted to calcium sulfate (gypsum) by exposure to
sulfates in soil and groundwater. Later, several fragments of the skull Dawson loaded
to potassium dichromate. This explains the presence of chromium in them. The fragments found later by Dawson and Woodward did not hold in potassium dichromate, and therefore
did not contain chromium. On the other hand, the jaw was artificially stained with
iron, resulting in only superficial staining. During staining, a chromium composition was used, which explains the presence of
chromium in the jaw, but gypsum is not obtained when staining.
Consider another point of view. If it is recognized that the staining of jelly-
The skull fragments (as well as the jaw) were
taken by the deceiver, then it must be assumed
that the deceiver used three different methods of staining: as an oxidizing agent, gypsum (calcium sulfate) was a by-product of this reaction. This may explain the presence of
gypsum and chromium in the five iron-stained cranial fragments found by Dawson. (2) Four skull fragments found by Dawson with
by Woodward contained gypsum but no chromium. So in this case, calcium dichromate was not used in
staining. (3) The jaw, which contained
chromium but no gypsum, must have been painted in a third way with
iron and chromium compounds, but did not result in
gypsum. It is difficult to understand why the deceiver would use so many methods,
when one would have sufficed. We should also be interested in why the deceiver carelessly stained the jaw less than the skull, thus risking
to be exposed.
Additional information in the form of eyewitness testimony suggests that,
, the skull was in fact from the Piltdown deposits. The eyewitness was Mabiel Ken
ward, daughter of Robert Kevord, owner of Barkham Manor. On February 23, 1955, Telegraph
published a letter from Miss Kenward, which read
the following: "One of the
saw what he called a 'coconut' when he was digging in an intact deposit. He smashed it with a pickaxe. , saved, and os-
threw the rest of it out." Particularly important is the evidence that the deposit was
intact. Even Weiner himself wrote: "We cannot dismiss the story of
about these diggers and their 'coconut' as pure fiction, a plausible fable,
composed to create an acceptable history of these pieces. If so, then
then there is the possibility that the workers actually found part of the
skull, but still, it is likely that they did not find a semi-fossilized Eoanthrope, but
some modern and ordinary grave.
Weiner suggested that the accused0093 my, whoever he was, could then replace the processed pieces of the skull with the pieces
that were found in reality. But if the workers were dealing with a "modern" and ordinary grave, then where are the rest of the bones of the body? At the end, Weiner
suggests that a fake skull was planted and the workers found it. But Me-
Bel Kenward testified that the surface where the workers began to dig was not damaged.
Robert Essex, science teacher, personally acquainted with Dawson at 1912-1915,
, gave interesting evidence about the Piltdown jaw, or jaws, when it was removed
. Essex wrote in 1955: “Another jaw was found at Piltdown,
which Dr. Weiner does not mention. I saw that jaw,
held it in my hands, and I know whose bags it ended up in Dawson's office."
Essex then gives important details. At the time, he was a science teacher at a local elementary school near Dawson's office.
Essex writes: "One day, as I was passing by, I was called by one of the
employees whom I know well.
He called me to show me a fossilized
half of a skull, which is more like the jaw of a man than an ape, and in which three molars were firmly set in
. When I asked where this object came from
, he replied: "From Piltdown."0093 was carried by one of the "diggers". He was carrying a bag in which to carry tools and asked Mr. Dawson. When told that Mr. Dawson was busy at court, he said he would leave his bag and come back. When worker
left, the employee opened the bag and saw the jaw. Seeing that I was approaching, he called me over. I told him that it would be better to put it back and that Mr.
Dawson would be angry if he found out. I later learned that when the
"digger" returned, Mr. Dawson was still busy in court, so he took his bag and left."
Essex later saw photographs of the Piltdown jaw. Noticing that this was not the
jaw he had seen in Dawson's office, he reported it to the British
Museum.
The discovery of a human jaw tends to support the view that the
human skull found at Piltdown was part of the sediments, even if we
admit that any other situ we are faced with the fact that
, this may be another remains of Homo sapiens sapiens from the end of the Middle Pleistocene and the beginning of the Late Pleistocene.
Who is accused?
The most recent work, which fully admits that the Piltdown
fossils and tools were a hoax, has
focused attention on establishing the identity of the accused. Weiner and Oakley, like others, hinted that amateur paleontologist Dawson was to blame for
. And the professional scientist Woodward was forgiven.
But it turned out that the Piltdown forgery required extensive
knowledge and ability, something that amateur anthropologist Dawson did not seem to possess. Don't
forget that the fossils of Piltdown Man were accompanied by many fossils of
extinct mammals. There seems to be some professional scientist involved in the Piltdown story who had
access to rare fossils and knew how to select and modify them to give the impression of a genuine
faunal complex of the right age.
Some tried to bring proceedings against Tilgard de Chardin, who studied
at the Jesuit college at Piltdown and met Dawson in 1909.
Weiner and his colleagues believed that the Stegodon tooth found at Piltdown was
from some North African site that Tilgard de Chardin might have visited between 1906 and 1908 when he lectured at Cairo University.
Woodward is another suspect. He personally dug up several0093 lost. If they were planted, then he must have noticed something was wrong.
This leads to the suspicion that he himself was involved in this scheme. In addition,
he was the only one who had access to the first Piltdown fossils, which were
in his care at the British Museum. This can be commented on as an attempt to protect evidence of forgery from other scientists.
The author of The Piltdown People, Ronald Milar, suspected Grafton Elliot Smith. Having a dislike for Woodward, Smith might decide to deceive him in this way.0093 in a graceful way. Smith, like Tilgard de Chardin, had spent some time in
Egypt and therefore had access to fossils that could be found at Piltdown. Franks Peser, Professor of Anthropology at Queen's College at
City University of New York, has written a book in which he accuses Sir Artur Keith, curator of the Royal College of Surgeons' Research Museum, of the Piltdown forgery.
Keith believed that modern humans appeared
earlier than other scientists could admit, and this, according to Spencer,0093 led him to plot with Dawson and plant evidence that
supports their hypothesis.
Another suspect was William Sollas, professor of geology at Cambridge.
He was mentioned in a tape recording by the English geologist James Douglas, who died in
1979 at the age of 93. Sollas did not like Woodward because he criticized Sollas' method of making plaster casts of the fossil. Douglas recalled that he sent Sollas from Bolivia a
bridgetooth tooth.0093 the one found at Piltdown, and that Sollas also obtained potassium dichromate
, a chemical apparently used to stain many of Piltdown's
specimens. Sollas also "borrowed" some monkey teeth from collection
of the Oxford Museum. According to Douglas, Sollas secretly rejoiced at seeing
how Woodward was fooled by the Piltdown forgeries.
But if Piltdown is a fake, then it's possible that we
are dealing with something more than personal revenge.
Spencer said samples 9
"were rigged to resist the
findings of scientists, and thus blame the
special interpretation of the human "fossil record".
In 1859 Darwin published On the Origin of Species, which almost immediately sparked a search for fossils linking Homo
with the ancient Miocene apes.0093 the absence of modern humans in the Pliocene and Miocene, Javanese man, and the Heidelberg jaw
were the only fossil discoveries that science could come up with. And as we saw in Chapter 8, Java Man, in particular, has not received unanimous support in the scientific world. From the beginning of
, there were ominous suggestions that the ape-like
skull did not actually refer to a human-like femur that was
found 45 feet away. In addition, a number of scientists in England and America, such as
how Arthur Smith Woodward, Grafton Elliot Smith, and Sir Arthur Keith developed
alternative views of human evolution in which the formation of a
human-like skull with a high forehead preceded the formation of a
human-like jaw.
However, the Java man had a skull with a low forehead
similar to that of an ape.
Since so many contemporary scholars have taken the liberty of speculating about the identity of the accused Piltdown
hoaxer and his
motives, we0093 would like to present a working hypothesis. Consider the following scenario. Workers at Barkham Manor did find a genuine Middle Pleistocene skull,
as described by Mabel Kenward. The skull pieces were given to Dawson. Dawson, who corresponded regularly with Woodward, informed him of this.
Woodward developing his own theory of human evolution and was very worried
about the lack of evidence for human evolution in science after 50 years
studies, planned and ensured the execution of this forgery. He acted
not alone, but together with a certain number of scientists connected with the British Museum, who helped
obtain specimens and prepare them in such a way as to resist the scientists'
research.
Oakley himself, who played a large part in Piltdown's exposure, wrote: "The Trinil
material [Javanese man] was tantalizingly incomplete, and for many scientists it was not sufficient confirmation of the Darwinian
theory of human
evolution.
I sometimes wondered if it was the bewildering
impatience of discovering a more acceptable "missing link," an impatience that
weaved the intricate
tangle of motives behind the Piltdown forgery.
assist the doctrine of human evolution and provide it with the "necessary"
"missing link". ...Piltdown could cause an irresistible desire in some fanatical biologist to do a good deed in relation to the fact that Nature0093 yes she created, but did not save.
Unfortunately for the hypothetical conspirators, the discoveries that were
made in the next few decades did not support the
evolutionary theory presented by the Piltdown forgery. Many scholars have admitted that the
discoveries of new specimens of Javanese and Peking people and the finds of Australopithecus
in Africa support the hypothesis that our ancestor was a low-browed ape-
man, and the very idea of a high-browed Piltdown man became necessary
discredit and replace.
As time went on, the difficulties in constructing an evolutionary genealogical tree of
fossil hominids increased. At some critical moment,
's unseen conspirators, linked to the British Museum, decided to act. Perhaps they
recruited not-so-smart colleagues and staged a systematic public exposure of the
fake they had done before. At the time of exposure, some samples may have been subjected to new physical and chemical treatments.0093 changes to give credence to the idea of a fake.
The idea of a group of conspirators operating in connection with the British Museum,
who committed forgery, seemed to many to be a stretch. But this is revealed
on the basis of a number of facts
as large or as small as the accusatory judgments made by others. Doubts have been thrown personally at so many English scientists, including some in the British Museum, that this
conspiracy theory does not really cover the whole range of malefactors.0093 lennikov.
Perhaps there were no conspirators in the British Museum. But, according to many
scientists, someone with a scientific background, acting alone or with someone,
still made a very successful forgery.
Gavin de Beer, director of the British Museum of Natural History, believed
that the methods used to expose the Piltdown hoax would "
make it impossible for a similar fraud to be successfully repeated in the future." But some
be a hoaxer who knows modern chemical and radiometric methods
dating could commit such a deception that would not be easy to detect.
Indeed, we can hardly be sure that in one of the largest museums in the world
there is no other forgery like the Piltdown one, and that it is just
waiting to be exposed.
Therefore, a crushing blow was dealt to the Piltdown remains. But
as far as we now know, this kind of incident is rare, but
there is another more insidious and common type of deception - template
alteration and reclassification of data in accordance with ossified preconceived
theoretical concepts.
Wyson de Pradin of the Institute of Anthropology in Paris wrote in his book
"Archaeological Frauds" (1925): "You often meet scientists with pre-
preconceived ideas who, even without committing a real fraud, do not hesitate to
report the facts of trickery they see so that it agrees with their theories.0093 in the toric industry must be manifested everywhere and always in the smallest detail.
Seeing the simultaneous presence of carefully crafted artifacts and
crude tools in some deposit, he decides that there must be two layers here:
the lower layer contains coarser samples. He classifies these
finds according to their type, not the layer in which he found them. If he finds a well-
well-finished tool below, he will state that there has been an accidental entry and
that it is necessary to carry it back to the original monument by means of a
mark.0093 mixing it with objects from the upper layers. He will end up with a real cheat in determining the stratigraphic position of the samples; cheating in the name of a preconceived
idea.
But this swindle is done more or less unconsciously by a man of good repute
, whom no one would call a cheater. Such examples
can be seen often, and I do not mention a single name, not at all because I don’t know anyone.0093 zey, universities and all other centers of paleoanthropological research throughout the world, although each individual case of filtering knowledge seems
insignificant, but the cumulative effect is
destructive, completely distorts and obscures the true picture of the origin and
ancient history of man.
There is a huge amount of evidence suggesting that beings just like us
lived as long ago as we would like to see - the Pliocene,
eo-
price, and so on. In the same period of time, the remains of monkeys and monkeys are found -
hominid humans, so it's possible that all 90,093 hominin species coexisted during that time. An evolutionary sequence can only be built by eliminating
a huge amount of facts and leaving only those fossils and artifacts that confirm
preconceived notions.
