X
Well attestedNamed from the place

Piltdown Man

noun · first attested 1912

A human skull, an orangutan jaw, and forty years of British paleontology.

A forged fossil hominid, and by extension any celebrated fraud that fools the experts for years.

Piltdown·United Kingdom

50.9820°N 0.0510°E · Q7194524

Open on the atlas

Record

Relationship
Named from the place
Confidence
Well attestedThe place link is the standard scholarly account.
Attested
1912
Part of speech
noun

Explanations here are written for this atlas. Dictionary text is not copied; the sources are linked so the claim can be checked.

How it traveled
  1. Step 1

    Piltdown

  2. In English

    Piltdown Man

The entry

Bones announced from a gravel pit at Piltdown in East Sussex in 1912 were accepted as the missing link, partly because they flattered a theory that the big brain evolved first. Chemical dating exposed the composite forgery in 1953, and who assembled it is still argued over.

United Kingdom

107 more words from United Kingdom

All 108 entries
Nearest pins