APRIL FOOLS' DAY PICTURES: Four Historic Science Hoaxes

nationalgeographic ^

[JoeProBono]

In 1912 scientists thought they'd discovered the elusive missing link between human and ape. Found in a gravel pit in Piltdown, England, a set of intriguing skull and jaw fragments were later reconstructed by the British Museum into a human-like head with an ape-like jaw.

In 1953 it turned out the find wasn't proof of anything—other than the skill of the still anonymous forger. The skull was a medieval human's. The jaw was an orangutan's. And the teeth were a chimp's.

[JoeProBono]

Cardiff Giant

In 1869 an astounding find was unearthed by a farmer and a cigar maker: a ten-foot-tall (three-meter-tall), 3,000-pound (1,360-kilogram) stone man buried near Cardiff, New York. The massive statue was an obvious hoax—experts said the giant, sculpted from gypsum, was of undoubtedly recent provenance. But the brothers made a bundle charging tourists 50 cents to view the "Cardiff Giant" nonetheless.

It's true that dinosaurs are related to birds. But one purported missing link turned out to be foul play. Archaeoraptor liaoningensis, a birdlike creature with the tail of a carnivorous dinosaur, was featured in National Geographic magazine and displayed at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C., in 1999.

But like Piltdown Man, the find proved too good to be true. What's now dubbed the Piltdown Chicken was a composite of fossils from two different creatures. National Geographic confirmed the mistake in April 2000.

Massive footprints in the snow spooked miners in the 1920s, who feared Sasquatch, or Bigfoot, was on their trail. But retired logger Rant Mullens admitted in 1982 that he'd helped perpetrate the legend by stamping giant footprints in the snow of Washington's Mount St. Helens using the carved wooden "feet" seen above.

On the right, a boy in 1975 holds a plaster cast his father, Mark Pettinger, believed to be a Sasquatch footprint found in Puyallup, Washington. Hoax—or not?

[Flycatcher]

You forgot to add “Man-made Global Warming” to the list.

[Keli Kilohana]

What about Man-made Catastrophes?

[MortMan]

Happy Obama Day to you, too!

[RegulatorCountry]

They’ve gotten much better since Piltdown. Now, entire species are created from a bone fragment the size of a dime.

[Flycatcher]

What about Man-made Catastrophes?

The California state legislature, sadly, is not a hoax...

[Westbrook]

>It’s true that dinosaurs are related to birds.

Really?

Let’s see.

* Lizards have a 3-chambered heart, birds have a 4-chambered heart.

* Lizards have solid bones, birds have hollow bones.

* Lizards are cold-blooded, birds are warm-blooded.

Of course, they have a lot of DNA in common, not only with eachother, but with us.

The evolutionists believe that is evidence of common ancestry.

I used to believe that.

Now I come to see it more as evidence of a common designer.

[stormer]

[stormer]

What makes you think that dinosaurs were lizards?

[Westbrook]

> What makes you think that dinosaurs were lizards?

Ah, sorry, reptiles.

And what makes you think they turned into birds?

[Skenderbej]

The April Fools turned out in November last year.

[RegulatorCountry]

Because of the meaning of the name, perhaps?

[stormer]

I would also provide these schematics. As you see the only substansial difference is the presence of a septum dividing the ventricals in the mammalian heart.

[Joe 6-pack]

While not a "scientific" hoax, I think an April Fool's Day salute is in order to my favorite forger of all times, Hans Van Meegeren. Van Meegeren painstakingly forged a number of Vermeer paintings, selling the fakes to the Nazi hierarchy including Hermann Goring. Following the war, Dutch officials sought to prosecute him for selling national treasures to the nazis, forcing him to admit to his acts of forgery for which he was tried and convicted instead.

Any guy who swindles nazis is good in my book :-)

Van Meegeren's "Christ at Emmaus" originally attributed to Vermeer

[Westbrook]

> the only substansial difference is the presence of a
> septum dividing the ventricals in the mammalian heart.

That’s ok. No need to explain. You and your fellow travellers can continue believing that the differences between dinosaurs and birds are trifling.

Just as long as you don’t require me by law to teach my children such nonsense.

[stormer]

Etymology is a poor substitute for physiology.

[a fool in paradise]

“Steel doesn’t burn!” - Rosie O’Donut

[smith288]

They found Goliath?

[a fool in paradise]

EDDIE!!!

[stormer]

I didn't say they were trifling, but a lot can happen in 65,000,000 years.