Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
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The outstanding interest of the Piltdown skull is the
confirmation it affords of the view that in the evolution
of Man the brain led the way.
Grafton Elliot Smith
Shortly before Christmas 1912, a remarkable fragmentary skull was pre-
sented at a widely attended meeting of the Geological Society of Lon-
don. The discovery had been made by Charles Dawson, a solicitor and an
amateur geologist and archaeologist who had recovered seven pieces of
the skull during the preceding four years from a gravel pit near Piltdown
Common, in East Sussex. From 1913 to 1915, additional skull fragments
appeared at Piltdown and two other nearby locations, including some
from at least one other individual.
Because the unprecedented fossil appeared to be a “missing link” that
was intermediary between apes and humans, it was given a new scien-
tific name,
Eoanthropus dawsoni
(“Dawson's dawn-man”), more commonly
known as “Piltdown Man.” The announcement caused great excitement
among British scientists, who claimed that its antiquity proved that
humans had originated in the British Isles. Piltdown had just become the
most important site anywhere for studying the early evolution of humans.
It would be over four decades before the world would learn that Pilt-
down Man was a fraudulent specimen that had been assembled from
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