> You could take a chimp skull, use the same techniques used to ‘reconstruct’ Neanderthal faces, and you’d get a similar result - a smiley fellow with a tad nar

> You could take a chimp skull, use the same techniques used to ‘reconstruct’ Neanderthal faces, and you’d get a similar result - a smiley fellow with a tad narrow forehead, big teeth, and long hair. Someone's already tried that! https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/feb/19/science.sciencenews https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/feb/19/science.scie... >"Anthropology is going to have to completely revise its picture of modern man between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago," said Thomas Terberger, the archaeologist who discovered the hoax. "Prof Protsch's work appeared to prove that anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals had co-existed, and perhaps even had children together. This now appears to be rubbish." >The scandal only came to light when Prof Protsch was caught trying to sell his department's entire chimpanzee skull collection to the United States. >An inquiry later established that he had also passed off fake fossils as real ones and had plagiarised other scientists' work. >"Their stories about him were increasingly bizarre. After a while it was hard to take it seriously. You had to laugh. It was just unbelievable. At the end of the day what he did was incredible." >During their investigation, the university discovered that Prof Protsch, 65, a flamboyant figure with a fondness for gold watches, Porsches and Cuban cigars, was unable to work his own carbon-dating machine. >Instead, after returning from Germany to America, where he did his doctorate, and taking up a professorship, he had simply made things up. >In one case he had claimed that a 50 million-year-old "half-ape" called Adapis had been found in Switzerland, an archaeological sensation. In reality, the ape had been dug up in France, where several other examples had already been found.