Archaeoraptor Hoax
National Geographic presented Archaeoraptor as a fossil linking birds and dinosaurs in 1999. The slab contained bones from different animals.
The slab appeared to show a birdlike body joined to a long dinosaur tail. It reportedly came from northeastern China, where genuine feathered fossils had already yielded evidence about the origins of birds.
Paleontologist Timothy Rowe and his colleagues used high-resolution CT scans to see through the slab. The scans showed how cracks, fragments, and filler fit together. The team concluded that bones of a primitive bird had been joined to those of a non-flying dromaeosaurid dinosaur. Their reconstruction appeared in Nature in 2001.
The case turned on whether the bones belonged together. Both sets of remains were genuine fossils, and the combination was a forgery. The Piltdown Man case also hinged on genuine remains assembled to look like a single specimen.
Bibliography:
- Simons, Lewis M. Archaeoraptor Fossil Trail. National Geographic (2000)
- Rowe, T., Ketcham, R. A., Denison, C., Colbert, M., Xu, X., & Currie, P. J. (2001). The Archaeoraptor forgery. Nature, 410, 539–540.
— EC Research Team