Says Cosmos Magazine here:
National Geographic’s senior editor Christopher Sloan had seen a feathered dinosaur fossil or two. But the specimen he described in the magazine’s November 1999 issue, dubbed Archaeoraptor liaoningensis, took his breath away.
…
Archaeoraptor would later be dubbed “Piltdown chicken”.
Cut n’ paste job. But even smart folks have been taken in.
The problem of faked fossils in China is serious and growing. Rather than being excavated by palaeontologists on fossil digs, most of the region’s fossils are pulled from the ground by desperately poor farmers and then sold on to dealers and museums. More.
Gotta have one? Don’t pay more than you would for some other souvenir. How about a stuffed gotta-have-one toy dressed as a Mountie?
Cheaper and maybe just as valuable.
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