Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French Jesuit, Catholic priest, scientist, palaeontologist, theologian, philosopher, and teacher. He was Darwinian and progressive in outlook and the author of several influential theological and philosophical books. His mainstream scientific achievements include his palaeontological research in China, taking part in the discovery of the significant Peking Man fossils from the Zhoukoudian cave complex near Beijing. His more speculative ideas, sometimes criticized as pseudoscientific, have included a vitalist conception of the Omega Point. Along with Vladimir Vernadsky, they also contributed to the development of the concept of a noosphere.
The Piltdown Man was a paleoanthropological fraud in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human. Although there were doubts about its authenticity virtually from the beginning, the remains were still broadly accepted for many years, and the falsity of the hoax was only definitively demonstrated in 1953. An extensive scientific review in 2016 established that amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson was responsible for the fraudulent evidence.
An out-of-place artifact is an artifact of historical, archaeological, or paleontological interest to someone that is claimed to have been found in an unusual context, which someone claims to challenge conventional historical chronology by its presence in that context. Some people might think that those artifacts are too advanced for the technology known to have existed at the time, or that human presence existed at a time before humans are known to have existed. Other people might hypothesize about a contact between different cultures that is hard to account for with conventional historical understanding.
Timeline of paleontology
Beringer's Lying Stones are pieces of limestone which were carved into the shape of various fictitious animals and "discovered" in 1725 by Johann Bartholomeus Adam Beringer (1667–1740), Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Würzburg. Beringer believed them to be fossils, and because some of them bore the name of God in Hebrew, suggested that they might be of divine origin. The scientific community at the time was still unsure as to what fossils actually were, the notion that they were the petrified remains of once-living organisms being merely one of several competing hypotheses.
The Fiji mermaid was an object composed of the torso and head of a juvenile monkey sewn to the back half of a fish. It was a common feature of sideshows where it was presented as the mummified body of a creature that was supposedly half mammal and half fish, a version of a mermaid. The original had fish scales with animal hair superimposed on its body and pendulous breasts on its chest. The mouth was wide open with its teeth bared. The right hand was against the right cheek, and the left tucked under its lower left jaw. This mermaid was supposedly caught near the Fiji Islands in the South Pacific. Several replicas and variations have also been made and exhibited under similar names and pretexts. P. T. Barnum exhibited the original in Barnum's American Museum in New York in 1842, but it then disappeared—likely destroyed in one of the many fires that destroyed parts of Barnum's collections.
Toad in the hole is a traditional British dish consisting of sausages in Yorkshire pudding batter, usually served with onion gravy and vegetables. Historically, the dish has also been prepared using other meats, such as rump steak and lamb's kidney. In the 21st century, vegetarian and vegan versions have appeared.
Fortean Times is a British monthly magazine devoted to the anomalous phenomena popularised by Charles Fort. Previously published by John Brown Publishing, I Feel Good Publishing, Dennis Publishing, and Exponent (2021), as of December 2021 it is published by Diamond Publishing, part of Metropolis International.
Ol' Rip the Horned Toad was a Texas horned lizard, commonly referred to as a "horned toad" or "horny toad", which supposedly survived a 31-year hibernation as an entombed animal following its exhumation from a cornerstone in Eastland, Texas, on February 18, 1928. The lizard became a national celebrity and appeared in 1920s motion pictures. Its name was a reference to American writer Washington Irving's fictional character Rip Van Winkle. The same year, a Texas political delegation led by Senator Earle Mayfield presented the docile lizard to President Calvin Coolidge at the White House for his inspection.
The common toad, European toad, or in Anglophone parts of Europe, simply the toad, is a toad found throughout most of Europe, in the western part of North Asia, and in a small portion of Northwest Africa. It is one of a group of closely related animals that are descended from a common ancestral line of toads and which form a species complex. The toad is an inconspicuous animal as it usually lies hidden during the day. It becomes active at dusk and spends the night hunting for the invertebrates on which it feeds. It moves with a slow, ungainly walk or short jumps, and has greyish-brown skin covered with wart-like lumps.
Midwife toads are a genus (Alytes) of frogs in the family Alytidae, and are found in most of Continental Europe and Northwestern Africa. It has also been introduced to Great Britain. Characteristic of these toad-like frogs is their parental care; the males carry a string of fertilised eggs on their backs, hence the name "midwife". The female expels a strand of eggs, which the male fertilizes externally. He then wraps them around his legs to protect them from predators in the water. When they are ready to hatch, the male wades into shallow water, where he allows the tadpoles to leap out of their eggs. Five separate species of midwife toads are found across western Europe, northern Africa, and Majorca.
Star jelly is a gelatinous substance sometimes found on grass and less commonly on the branches of trees. According to folklore, it is deposited on the Earth during meteor showers. It is described as a translucent or grayish-white gelatin that tends to evaporate shortly after having "fallen". Explanations have ranged from it being the remains of frogs, toads, or worms, to the byproducts of cyanobacteria, to being the fruiting bodies of jelly fungi or masses of amoeba called slime molds. Nonbiological origins proposed for instances of "star jelly" have included byproducts from industrial production or waste management. Reports of the substance date back to the 14th century and have continued to the present.
The Ica stones are a collection of andesite stones from the Ica Province in Peru, known for their engraved motifs. Largely regarded to be modern hoaxes, the stones in some cases utilize art styles from various pre-Columbian Peruvian civilizations and often depict anachronistic scenes or objects, including dinosaurs and advanced technology.
Gef, also referred to as the Talking Mongoose or the Dalby Spook, was an allegedly talking mongoose which inhabited a farmhouse owned by the Irving family, located at Cashen's Gap near the hamlet of Dalby on the Isle of Man. The story was given extensive coverage by the tabloid press in Britain in the early 1930s. The Irvings' claims gained the attention of parapsychologists and ghost hunters, such as Harry Price, Hereward Carrington, and Nandor Fodor. Some investigators of the era as well as contemporary critics have concluded that the phenomenon was a hoax that the Irving family perpetuated by using ventriloquism.
Charles Dawson was a British amateur archaeologist who claimed to have made a number of archaeological and palaeontological discoveries that were later exposed as frauds. These forgeries included the Piltdown Man, a unique set of bones that he claimed to have found in 1912 in Sussex. Many technological methods such as fluorine testing indicate that this discovery was a hoax, and Dawson, the only one with the skill and knowledge to generate this forgery, was a major suspect.
The Majorcan midwife toad is a frog in the family Alytidae. It is endemic to the Balearic Island of Majorca in the Mediterranean Sea. An example of Lazarus taxon, the species was first described from fossil remains in 1977, but living animals were discovered in 1979.
Booth Museum of Natural History is a charitable trust-managed, municipally-owned museum of natural history in the city of Brighton and Hove in the South East of England. Its focus is on Victorian taxidermy, especially of British birds, as well as collections focusing on entomology, chalk fossils, skeletons and botany. It is part of "Royal Pavilion & Museums Trust". Admission to the museum is free.
The Rouffignac cave, in the French commune of Rouffignac-Saint-Cernin-de-Reilhac in the Dordogne département, contains over 250 engravings and cave paintings dating back to the Upper Paleolithic. In conjunction with other caves and abris of the Vézère valley, the Rouffignac cave was classified a Monument historique in 1957 and a World Heritage Site in 1979 by UNESCO as part of the Prehistoric Sites and Decorated Caves of the Vézère Valley.
Miles Russell, is a British archaeologist best known for his work and publications on the prehistoric and Roman periods and for his appearances in television programmes such as Time Team and Harry Hill's TV Burp.
