Fossils and Frauds

On October 15, 1999, Stephen Czerkas, director of a dinosaur museum in Utah, and the National Geographic Society (NGS) announced that they had discovered Archaeoraptor liaoningensis (“ancient bird of prey from Liaoning”).¹ They presented the fossil, acquired for $80,000 at an Arizona mineral show, as “a true missing link . . . [capturing] the paleontological ‘moment’ when dinosaurs were becoming birds.”² Although National Geographic’s subsequent article “Feathers for T. Rex?”³ made grand claims, they soon discovered that the emperor had no clothes or, rather, that the T. Rex had no feathers!

Fossil frauds are, of course, nothing new. Famously in 1912, the British Museum announced that it had discovered a missing link between apes and humans, near Piltdown in England. Yet, in 1953, Joseph Weiner and others proved that the “Piltdown man” was a fake; an ancient human skull had been combined with a modified lower jaw of a modern orangutan. However, since scientists have discredited the evidence for the archaeopteryx being the missing link between dinosaurs and birds, paleontologists have been under pressure to unearth an actual reptilian ancestor for birds.

According to National Geographic, the fossil, smuggled out of China, had the forelimbs of a primitive bird and a dinosaur’s tail; the turkey-sized animal was “the missing link between terrestrial dinosaurs and birds that could actually fly.”⁴ Archaeoraptor’s fossil not only appeared in the magazine but in the public display at NGS headquarters in Washington and on the TV program, “National Geographic Explorer.”⁵

However, despite the fanfare, others had their doubts. Storrs Olson, the curator of birds at Washington’s Smithsonian Institution, wrote an open letter to the NGS arguing that “. . . none of the structures illustrated in Sloan’s article that are claimed to be feathers have actually been proven to be feathers.” “Larry D. Martin, paleontologist at the University of Kansas specializing in bird fossils, also could not see feathers. Furthermore, Martin's examination of photographs caused him to propose the hypothesis that the pieces of the fossil had been assembled and could include more than one animal.”⁶

The final act of this drama was then played out by Chinese paleontologist Xu Xing.⁷ Although he had appeared at the initial press conference to authenticate the fossil, he returned to China determined to find the matching part of the fossil slab.⁸ Having found it, he saw that it did not authenticate the discovery; the fossil consisted of a dinosaur tail glued to the body of an early bird. Red-faced paleontologists rushed to reject Archaeoraptor’s authenticity.⁹ Although National Geographic issued a partial retraction on January 21, 2000, Nature magazine castigated them the following month for “naively and hastily publishing an article—described as ‘sensationalistic, unsubstantiated, tabloid journalism’ by a leading paleontologist—sprinkled with dubious assertions.”¹⁰

This is a classic example of making the evidence fit the theory. While many blame the international trade in smuggled fossils or shoddy journalism, the real culprit was the blind faith of evolutionists. The Smithsonian’s curator, Storrs Olson, hit the mark when he criticized NGS for collaborating with “a cadre of zealous scientists” who have become “outspoken and highly biased proselytizers of the faith” that birds evolved from dinosaurs. As Olson concluded, “Truth and careful scientific weighing of evidence have been among the first casualties in their program, which is fast becoming one of the grander scientific hoaxes of our age.”¹¹ It is, indeed, a sad spectacle when scientists betray their calling and cast off their standards as they pursue an ideological agenda.

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