Fake Fossils

Hello World Wide Web,

Just another person here who is disillusioned with the hijacking of science by those with unscrupulous intent, who have neither love of science or truth. Yes, that includes the dinosaur-to-bird hypothesists, and creationists alike.

Below are a small list of links covering the rash of fake fossils churned out on the black market, leading to a meltdown of Paleontology and polluting history.

Snagged from the web:

"While there are indeed examples... they are rare and insignificant next to the tremendous body of genuine fossils. The fake fossils are therefore of no relevance to the evo/cre debate, and deserve only to be dismissed as historical oddities..."

IS 80% "RARE"??

"...Counterfeit fossils undermine research projects
Fake fossils are duping scientists and museums, a senior paleontologist has warned, after a scholar was forced to retract a controversial essay that stated the cheetah originated in China.
According to Li Chun, associate researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, counterfeits are now widespread and have become a serious risk to genuine study projects.
"I believe many scholars are victims of fake fossils," he said, before estimating that more than 80 percent of marine reptile specimens on display in Chinese museums "have been altered or artificially combined to varying degrees".
(Source)

1. How Fake Fossils Pervert Paleontology
   A nebulous trade in forged and illegal fossils is an ever-growing headache for paleontologists. Scientific American.
2. Altering the Past: China's Faked Fossils Problem Sciencemag.org
3. China's Dinosaur Fossils: Vast, but Are They Real? time.com
4. Fake Chinese Fossils
5. Chinese dino-bird fossil evaluated cautiously – may be faked
6. There are “fake” fossil mounts after all…in China
7. Fake Chinese fossils an 'insult' to museum visitors
8. Fossil fakes and their recognition
9. Fakes Overview: In the case of China, where the majority of modern fakes come from, most fake fossils are produced by poor farmers.
10. Expert: 80% fossils in Chinese museums are fakes
11. 'Piltdown' bird fake explained
12. Chinese Museum Forced To Close After Most Of Its 40,000 Artifacts Are Found To Be Fake
13. Fake fossils coming out of China
14. Expert Claims Fake Fossils in Most Chinese Museums
15. Counterfeit fossils undermine research projects
16. Archaeology Being Undermined By Fake Fossils Of Imaginary Animals Could your favorite ancient animal species not be real? Via the Archaeology News Network: Fake fossils are duping scientists and museums, a senior paleontologist has warned, after a scholar was forced to retract a controversial essay that stated the cheetah originated in China.
    According to Li Chun, associate researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, counterfeits are now widespread and have become a serious risk to genuine study projects. “I believe many scholars are victims of fake fossils,” he said, before estimating that more than 80 percent of marine reptile specimens on display in Chinese museums “have been altered or artificially combined to varying degrees”.
17. The Piltdown Chicken
18. Counterfeit fossils undermine research projects: Fake fossils are duping scientists and museums, a senior paleontologist has warned, after a scholar was forced to retract a controversial essay that stated the cheetah originated in China. According to Li Chun, associate researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, counterfeits are now widespread and have become a serious risk to genuine study projects.
    "I believe many scholars are victims of fake fossils," he said, before estimating that more than 80 percent of marine reptile specimens on display in Chinese museums "have been altered or artificially combined to varying degrees".
    "Without professional training in paleontology, it's impossible for researchers to recognize fakes from the real thing."
    Li's alert follows the debunking last month of an essay co-authored by Huang Ji, a Chinese scientist, and Danish researcher Per Christiansen in 2008 about an alleged new species of cheetah.

"Last week, when paleontologists unveiled a fossil purporting to be the earliest known bird, media outlets rapidly spread the news. Most relayed the team's contention, published in Nature, that the 160-million- year-old fossil from China dubbed Aurornis resolves long-standing controversies about the early evolutionary history of birds, which nearly all researchers now believe descended from feathered dinosaurs. But the picture is murkier. Few media reports noted that Aurornis, or dawn bird, had not been found during the team's excavations in China, but had been acquired from a fossil dealer. This key information was not in the main body of the Nature paper, but rather in online supplementary information (SI) that accompanied it. The authors acknowledge the possibility that the specimen may be 35 million years younger than reported; they are conducting additional tests to verify its provenance.
Suspicions dog any specimens from the fabulous fossil fields in northeast China's Liaoning province, where Aurornis and dozens of other new species of feathered dinosaurs and early birds have been found over the past 15 years. Some of the country's leading paleontologists have been outspoken about a growing number of fake and composite specimens from Liaoning and other fossil-rich areas of China (Science , 24 December 2010, p. 1740). "This is a big concern," says Zhou Zhonghe, director of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing. "Illegal and unscientific collecting and commercial trading," he says, have flooded the market with fake fossils and caused an irretrievable loss of crucial information, such as where authentic fossils came from."
(Source)