Piltdown Man

The Piltdown Man, hailed in 1912 as the evolutionary 'missing link,' was actually a crude forgery combining a medieval human cranium with an orangutan jawbone and chemically treated to appear ancient. In 1953, radiocarbon dating and fluorine analysis conclusively proved it was a hoax, but the fraud had already distorted paleoanthropology for 41 years, causing scientists to reject genuine hominid fossils like the Taung Child for decades.