In 1912, British scientists believed they had finally found definitive proof of mankind’s evolution: the missing link between man and ape. As Time reports, the parts of a skull and jawbone, collected from a gravel pit in the village of Piltdown, had many experts convinced they were the fossilized remains of an unknown form of early man. But 41 years later, the Piltdown man was finally exposed as a composite forgery: a human skull from medieval times, the 500-year-old lower jaw of a Sarawak orangutan and chimpanzee fossil teeth.