Fake fossil not one but two new species
By Sid Perkins
The tortuous tale of a forged fossil just keeps getting weirder.
When scientists unveiled Archaeoraptor liaoningensis at a National Geographic Society press conference in October 1999, some researchers hailed the fossil as a missing link between birds and dinosaurs. But the very mixture of features that made the fossil evolutionarily interesting–the flightworthy feathers and advanced wing structure of birds and a tail like that of a small theropod dinosaur–also caused some scientists to doubt its authenticity (SN: 11/20/99, p. 328).