The Piltdown Man
The Piltdown Man  
Podcast: Hoax!
Published On: Mon Jan 19 2026
Description: In December 1912, Arthur Smith Woodward, a paleontologist at the British Museum, presented something extraordinary to the Geographical Society: a "missing link" fossil, a species he named "Dawson's Dawn-man" after the Sussex solicitor who found the original fossil. It was the find of a lifetime, and a much-needed bit of national pride for the English. The only problem? It wasn't real. SOURCES:The Piltdown Man Hoax: Case Closed by Miles Russell Piltdown Man: The Secret Life of Charles Dawson by Miles Russell (Tempus, Stroud, 2003)https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/the-problem-of-piltdown-man/https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/nov/23/piltdown-man-remains-exposed-as-fake-1953https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2016/08/folklore-piltdown-man-hoax/'The Perpetrator at Piltdown' by J Winslow and A Meyer, Science (September, 1983)https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2016/august/piltdown-man-charles-dawson-likely-fraudster.htmlhttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/piltdown-man-paleoanthropologys-april-fools-176401927/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.