“Skull fragment may not be human”, announced the Knoxville News-Sentinel. The Daily Telegraph, an Australian newspaper, carried the story of the latest bone hoax with the much more humorous (pardon the pun) headline: “ASS TAKEN FOR MAN.”
Pin ItTag: Solly Zuckerman
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.
