Piltdown man
[pilt-doun]
- a hypothetical early modern human, assigned to the genus Eoanthropus, whose existence was inferred from skull fragments that were allegedly found at Piltdown, England, in 1912 but were exposed as fraudulent through chemical analysis in 1953.
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Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Piltdown man
- an advanced hominid postulated from fossil bones found in Sussex in 1912, but shown by modern dating methods in 1953 to be a hoax, which was perpetrated by a student museum assistant who was refused a wage
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Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Piltdown man
[pĭlt′doun′]
- A presumed early species of human, Eoanthropus dawsoni, postulated from a skull supposedly found in a gravel bed in about 1912 but determined in 1953 to be a fake constructed from a human cranium and the jawbone of an ape.
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The American Heritage® Science Dictionary
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