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Piltdown fraud exposed...
Ralph L Holloway (rlh2@COLUMBIA.EDU)
Sat, 25 May 1996 11:54:52 -0400
accusation in the Piltdown saga. Without mentioning Sir Solly Zuckerman,
who several years back intimated that the culprit was Martin A.C. Hinton,
a paleontologist who worked at the Museum, the Times announces that
Professor Brian Gardiner, a paleontologist at King's College, has found
the most significant evidence yet in this case. It appears that, indeed,
M.Hinton was the "culprit". A trunk belonging to him was found in an
abandoned tower of the BMNH:
"Along with hundreds of vials of rodent remains from dissections,
the trunk contained hippopatamus fossils, elephant teeth and assorted
bones that looked like those from the Piltdown collection, and were
stained, tests proved, with the same mix of chemicals used on the Piltdown
bones. It appeared, in fact, as if the bones in the trunk had been trial
runs for the final hoax."
This is apparently appearing in the May 23 issue of Nature. I think
this is about as close to a smoking gun as it can get. I trust Zuckerman's
observations which were published in a long past issue of NY Review of
Books, will be mentioned. This certainly takes Sir Arthur Keith off the
list, which I believe was Phillip Tobias' favored candidate. Ditto with
Teilhard de Chardin, Steve Gould's villain.
I guess the question now is for those who refuse to give up on this,
is who planted the trunk in the tower to incriminate Hinton...
Ralph Holloway
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