Man Behind Missing Link Hoax Identified by Magazine

After 84 years, the man behind one of science’s biggest frauds--in which a skull was held as evolutionary proof of a missing link between apes and humans--may have been identified.

The apparent culprit was Martin A.C. Hinton, a curator of zoology at Britain’s Natural History Museum when the so-called Piltdown Man skull was dug up in 1912, according to Brian Gardiner, professor of paleontology at King’s College London.

Many other suspects have been suggested over the years. But Thursday’s issue of the weekly science magazine Nature says a trunk with Hinton’s initials, found in a loft at the museum in London, appears to identify Hinton unequivocally as the hoaxer.

The trunk contained animal bones stained the same way as the Piltdown fossils to make them look old, indicating that it was Hinton who faked and planted the skull at a gravel pit at Piltdown 30 miles south of London.

The skull was unearthed there by Charles Dawson, a lawyer and amateur geologist who yearned for scientific recognition. He died in 1916.

In 1953, the increasingly skeptical museum conducted tests that showed the Piltdown skull was a cleverly assembled fake, combining part of a modern human skull with the jaw of an orangutan. But Hinton, a known practical joker, was never formally identified as the hoaxer until now and took his secret to the grave in 1961.

“The discovery is the first solid evidence in the case after decades of speculation” about the hoaxer’s identity, the magazine wrote on Thursday. “The evidence appears to identify Hinton as the sole fraudster--and Dawson as his unwitting dupe.”

The discovery of the skull set the scientific world ablaze. Researchers hailed it as proof of a missing link between apes and humans.