Eoanthropus

Eoanthropus, meaning “dawn human,” refers to a fossil claim from Piltdown, England, that was announced in 1912 as evidence for an early human ancestor. The genus Eoanthropus and the species Eoanthropus dawsoni were named by Charles Dawson with the help of Arthur Smith Woodward to describe a skullcap and related remains recovered at Piltdown Quarry. At the time, the find was hailed as a crucial link in human evolution and was dated to roughly half a million years old, placing it among early hominins.

The specimen consisted of a skull fragment or cranium, a jawbone, and other associated elements. The jaw was described as belonging to an archaic human ancestor, and the teeth were thought to support a mid-Pleistocene age. The assemblage was later reconstructed and presented as a single individual from a distant past.

In 1953, a scientific examination revealed that the Piltdown remains were a fraud. A team led by Kenneth Oakley, with Wilfrid Le Gros Clark and Joseph Weiner, demonstrated that the skullcap belonged to a modern human, the jawbone to an orangutan, and the teeth had been altered to fit the jaw and deliberately aged. The two sets of fossils appeared to be deliberately manufactured and artificially weathered to suggest antiquity. The discovery led to a re-evaluation of procedures in paleoanthropology and highlighted the need for rigorous authentication of fossils.

Today, Eoanthropus dawsoni is regarded as a scientific hoax, and the Piltdown fossils are not considered credible evidence for an early human lineage. The episode remains a cautionary tale about fraud in scientific discovery.