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History of modern man unravels as German scholar is exposed as fraud Flamboyant anthropologist falsified dating of key discoveries Luke Harding in Berlin Saturday February 19, 2005 The Guardian It appeared to be one of archaeology's most sensational finds. The skull fragment discovered in a peat bog near Hamburg was more than 36,000 years old - and was the vital missing link between modern humans and Neanderthals. This, at least, is what Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten - a distinguished, cigar-smoking German anthropologist - told his scientific colleagues, to global acclaim, after being invited to date the extremely rare skull....

Panel says professor of human origins made up data, plagiarized works A flamboyant anthropology professor, whose work had been cited as evidence Neanderthal man once lived in Northern Europe, has resigned after a German university panel ruled he fabricated data and plagiarized the works of his colleagues. Reiner Protsch von Zieten, a Frankfurt university panel ruled, lied about the age of human skulls, dating them tens of thousands of years old, even though they were much younger, reports Deutsche Welle. "The commission finds that Prof. Protsch has forged and manipulated scientific facts over the past 30 years," the university said...

Disgraced Anthropologist Drinks 40,000-Year-Old Milk by Scott Ott (2005-02-19) -- A disgraced German anthropology professor, who pretended to use carbon dating to establish a link between Neanderthals and modern man, told reporters today that he regularly drinks 40,000-year-old milk and drives a Porsche Carrera made in 736 BC. Frankfurt Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten resigned this week from a 30-year career as one of the world's leading anthropologists, when a panel concluded his carbon dating of human bones was incorrect by thousands of years. The inquiry found that one skull, which Mr. Protsch claimed came from a 27,400-year-old human fossil,...

A flamboyant anthropology professor, whose work had been cited as evidence Neanderthal man once lived in Northern Europe, has resigned after a German university panel ruled he fabricated data and plagiarized the works of his colleagues. Reiner Protsch von Zieten, a Frankfurt university panel ruled, lied about the age of human skulls, dating them tens of thousands of years old, even though they were much younger, reports Deutsche Welle. "The commission finds that Prof. Protsch has forged and manipulated scientific facts over the past 30 years," the university said of the widely recognized expert in carbon data in a prepared...

Neanderthal Man 'never walked in northern Europe' By Tony Paterson in Berlin (Filed: 22/08/2004) Historians of the Stone Age fear that they will have to rip up their theories about Neanderthal Man after doubt has been cast on the carbon dating of skeletons by a leading German anthropologist. Work by the flamboyant Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten showed that Neanderthal Man existed in northern Europe. Calculations on skeletal remains found at Hahnofersand, near Hamburg, stated they were 36,000 years old. Yet recent research at Oxford University's carbon-dating laboratory has suggested that they date back a mere 7,500 years. By that...

Over the past 20 years, chemist Marvin Rowe of Texas A&M University has developed a nondestructive method for carbon dioxide extraction. In his process, an object is placed in a vacuum chamber and a supercritical fluid -- a hybrid gas/liquid -- is applied as a solvent (as in dry cleaning). Next, Rowe passes plasma -- an "electrically excited ionized gas" -- over the artifact, which selectively strips carbon from the sample. "It's essentially like slowly burning the sample, so we can just oxidize a little off the surface and collect that carbon dioxide," explains Rowe. This year he further refined...

In conventional dating methods, scientists remove a small sample from an object, such as a cloth or bone fragment. Then they treat the sample with a strong acid and a strong base and finally burn the sample in a small glass chamber to produce carbon dioxide gas to analyze its C-14 content. Rowe's new method, called "non-destructive carbon dating," eliminates sampling, the destructive acid-base washes, and burning. In the new method, scientists place an entire artifact in a special chamber with a plasma, an electrically charged gas similar to gases used in big-screen plasma television displays. The gas slowly and...

Read the entire article at Possibly the Biggest Radiocarbon Dating Mistake Ever to see it formatted, with images, notes and cited works. I asked my teacher about it but was ridiculed for not being scientific.” -- High School Student from Alaska It may well go down as the biggest radiocarbon dating mistake in history; not because there is anything wrong with the measurement process (there may not have been); not because there is anything inherently wrong with carbon 14 dating (there is not); not because of shoddy sample taking (which indeed was shoddy); not because of red flags that should...