Finally, in 1953 and after nearly 40 years, Joseph Weiner and Kenneth Oakley applied the recently developed fluorine test to the bones—and found that Piltdown Man was a complete hoax. Someone had intentionally taken an ape jaw and combined it with a fragment of human skull bone, filed the teeth somewhat, and then carefully stained the entire “specimen” so that the bones looked both ancient and appeared to be a matching set.
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