FAKE FOSSILS 169 FAKE FOSSILS D M Martill, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK ß 2005, Elsevier Ltd All Rights Reserved Introduction This article considers fake fossils and the part that forgers have played in ruining scientific reputations and hindering the development of science In some cases, financial reasons appear to have been a motive for forgery, but the impact has, nonetheless, been detrimental to science This article is written from a certain amount of experience, the author having fallen foul of at least one fossil fabrication Some tips are provided for those who might encounter fake fossils Forged fossils fall into a number of categories Some are complete fabrications and should be considered as sculptures They may be cast from materials that resemble rock, such as plaster or cement, or carved from real rocks Some forgeries represent embellishments of genuine fossils, and include the addition of elements from another fossil simply to make an incomplete specimen appear more complete Other forgeries are conversions whereby a common fossil is transformed to resemble something much rarer; others are chimeras whereby two or more fossils of different animals are united to produce quite fabulous creatures Some composites are not manufactured deliberately to deceive; rather, many simply represent attempts to fill gaps for aesthetic purposes and to make museum displays more informative In this latter case, no deceit is intended, but when past curators have failed to keep records of which fossils were amalgamated, taxonomic problems have arisen several years later In some unusual cases of forgery, remains of modern animals and plants are transmogrified into fossils by being embedded in resins or by being glued onto bedding planes (Figure 1) Deciding what constitutes a fossil forgery can be difficult Purists might argue that any modification of a fossil represents an act of forgery, although a museum display specimen might be enhanced simply to demonstrate what a skeleton may have looked like when complete, or a damaged piece might be skilfully repaired to obscure an ugly scar or hole, perhaps caused by bad collecting practice Certainly, Victorian museum curators thought it perfectly acceptable to construct a complete skeleton from the remains of a number of partial skeletons One of the most famous examples includes the mounted skeleton of the giant sauropod dinosaur Brachiosaurus brancai that forms the centrepiece to the Humboldt Museum in Berlin This magnificent skeleton is thought to contain the parts of at least five different individual fossils Cruel Hoaxes Fake fossils represent deliberate attempts by the unscrupulous to hoodwink the unsuspecting into believing that an object is a genuine fossil Such is human nature that as long as fossils have a financial value or can result in prestige for the discoverer or describer, then there are going to be disreputable people prepared to exploit this for their own ends, be they greed, spite, or self-betterment This is not a new phenomenon, and has been a practice from the earliest days of palaeontology Some faking of fossils is indeed a consequence of criminal intent to obtain money through deception, but in a number of cases, fossils have been faked in what appear to have been either jokes that have gone seriously wrong or deliberate attempts to ruin scientific reputations Such is the case of the now famous lying stones of Eibelstadt, near Wurzburg, Germany This is one of the oldest, well-documented cases of fossil forgery, Figure In this crude attempt to forge a fossil, a recently dead dragonfly has been glued to the surface of a piece of limestone Such forgeries at first can appear to be examples of excellent preservation Be alert if a thin veneer of varnish prevents direct access to the surface of the fossil