Ignored Because of a Hoax

One of the most important finds in the search for man’s ancestors was ignored for years because of the Piltdown Man hoax. The Pildown skull - ‘found’ in England in 1912 but exposed as a fake only in the 1950s - had purpoted to show that man’s ancestors had large man-like skulls and ape-like jaws. So in 1924, when Raymond Dart, Professor of Anatomy at Witwatersrand University, found a very different looking skull at the Taung caves in South Africa, his conclusion that it belonged to an early hominid was dismissed. Only when other bones from the same species - named Australopithecus africanus - were discovered that doubts begin to grow about Piltdown Man. Today the species Dart discovered is thought to have lived about 5 million years ago, making it one of the earliest stages in the development of man.