Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Smith Woodward, also attended the Fourth International Congress of
Zoology in Cambridge, England, during the summer of 1898, where
Dubois defended his missing link and presented detailed new informa-
that they and others who attended the congress (possibly including
Dawson and Hinton) were aware of the history behind Dubois's discov-
ery, including the “coconut” story.
The Piltdown incident exposed a tendency among supposedly ob-
jective evolutionary scientists to pressure one another into accepting
mainstream (or what they hoped would become mainstream) views.
Thinking too freely was frowned upon, as Raymond Dart would soon
learn. As he and Dora spent that bleak Christmas of 1922 journeying to
South Africa, Dart had no way of knowing that his unorthodoxy and
outspokenness would unleash an intense controversy over a new discov-
ery that was destined to rile the Piltdown committee and become the
most important anthropological fossil of the twentieth century.
