Researchers applying modern forensic techniques to a century-old puzzle have laid bare intriguing new details about one of the most notorious scientific hoaxes on record, the so-called Piltdown Man, and are confident in the culprit's identity.
The phony fossil remains of a "missing link" between apes and humans, planted in gravel near the English village of Piltdown, were concocted using the jawbone and teeth from a single orangutan, two or three sets of old human remains and the liberal use of dental putty, the researchers said on Wednesday.
They said their findings left little doubt the perpetrator was amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson, who in 1912 "discovered" the first of the bogus Piltdown remains and has long been the chief suspect.