Seymour Flops
Diamond Member
Some of you may have already read on anther thread that the famous "Piltdown Man" hoax is still fooling some of the people, some of the time.
Piltdown is a town in England. But lest American evolutionary hoaxters be outdone, let us consider "Nebraska Man."
To be fair, "Nebraska Man," was not a hoax exactly. You could say that the discoverers of Hesperopithecus haroldcookii, were only fooling themselves. They may well have seriously believed that they found the first higher primate in North America, in the heart of the Midwest, no less. After all . . . they had a whole tooth to prove it! Anyway,
This is what happens when wishful thinking and ambition over-ride common sense and scientific skepticism.
From Wiki:
Examinations of the specimen continued, and the original describers continued to draw comparisons between Hesperopithecus and apes. Further field work on the site in the summers of 1925 and 1926 uncovered other parts of the skeleton. These discoveries revealed that the tooth was incorrectly identified. According to these discovered pieces, the tooth belonged neither to a man nor an ape, but to a fossil of an extinct species of peccary called Prosthennops serus. The misidentification was attributed to the fact that the original specimen was severely weathered. The earlier identification as an ape was retracted in the journal Science in 1927.[3]
BTW: here's what a peccary is:
So, wait. They found a tooth. They concluded it was a human-like ape tooth. Then years later, they bothered to dig up the rest of the skeleton.
That's the kind of crack investigative work that led to the Muller Report!
Hm . . . the specimen was "severely weathered," so they made a mistake? Is being severely weathered really taht rare in bones that have been buried for tens of thousands of years? I think not . . .
Piltdown is a town in England. But lest American evolutionary hoaxters be outdone, let us consider "Nebraska Man."
To be fair, "Nebraska Man," was not a hoax exactly. You could say that the discoverers of Hesperopithecus haroldcookii, were only fooling themselves. They may well have seriously believed that they found the first higher primate in North America, in the heart of the Midwest, no less. After all . . . they had a whole tooth to prove it! Anyway,
This is what happens when wishful thinking and ambition over-ride common sense and scientific skepticism.
From Wiki:
Examinations of the specimen continued, and the original describers continued to draw comparisons between Hesperopithecus and apes. Further field work on the site in the summers of 1925 and 1926 uncovered other parts of the skeleton. These discoveries revealed that the tooth was incorrectly identified. According to these discovered pieces, the tooth belonged neither to a man nor an ape, but to a fossil of an extinct species of peccary called Prosthennops serus. The misidentification was attributed to the fact that the original specimen was severely weathered. The earlier identification as an ape was retracted in the journal Science in 1927.[3]
BTW: here's what a peccary is:
So, wait. They found a tooth. They concluded it was a human-like ape tooth. Then years later, they bothered to dig up the rest of the skeleton.
That's the kind of crack investigative work that led to the Muller Report!
Hm . . . the specimen was "severely weathered," so they made a mistake? Is being severely weathered really taht rare in bones that have been buried for tens of thousands of years? I think not . . .
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