Fossil Sparks
New finds ignite controversy over ape and human evolution
By Bruce Bower
Fifty years ago, British anatomist Wilfrid Le Gros Clark explained in a lecture why evolutionary scientists argue so vehemently about how ancient apelike and humanlike creatures eventually gave way to modern humans. “Every fossil relic which appears to throw light on connecting links in man’s ancestry always has, and always will, arouse controversy,” he stated, “and it is right that this should be so, for it is very true that the sparks of controversy often illuminate the way to truth.”
Le Gros Clark was no stranger to wringing the truth out of bits of fossilized skeleton. In 1953, he assisted in unmasking the infamous Piltdown hoax. For more than 40 years, researchers had assumed that skull and jaw fragments collected from a British gravel pit came from a previously unknown early human species. The finds actually consisted of an orangutan’s lower jaw and a modern man’s skull.