In 1912 Charles Dawson, an amateur archaeologist claimed to have discovered the ‘missing link’ between ape and man. He had found part of a human-like skull in Pleistocene gravel beds near Piltdown ...

But in 1953, the jawbone was found to be that of a modern ape -- orangutan ... a very thick skull about the size of a modern human's and a large, apelike jaw, were part of the same individual ...

Foramen magnum: A large hole at the underside of the skull where the spinal ... "The last common ancestor of apes and humans," in Interpreting the Past: Essays on Human, Primate, and Mammal ...

The angle at which the child's spine had joined its skull ... of a chimpanzee. The question was not fully resolved for many years. In 1973, when Don Johanson found a surprisingly human-looking ...