ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the progress of the discovery of human remains during the period 1950-1959 to show very clearly how the whole focus of research in the field of human palaeontology had shifted to the African continent. It explains how a discovery reported in Great Britain, from Piltdown in Sussex, caused a major stir among anatomists. The Piltdown skull became the subject of intensive studies and much controversy. In the year 1953, a new method of checking upon fossil human remains in relation to associated animal bones, by means of fluorine tests, was being developed by Oakley. He soon decided to apply this test to the Piltdown skull and mandible, as well as to the fossil animal bones which were supposed to have been associated with the human ones. He reported that there was also clear evidence that the animal teeth and bones supposedly found with them were of a quite different age.
