This is the chappie who in 1912 found the bones of Piltdown Man and claimed that the Missing Link between man and the apes had lived and died in Sussex long ago, specifically in a gravel pit at Piltdown.
Mr Dawson, a country solicitor with time on his hands, gifted with a profound interest in geology and palaeontology, and evidently suffering from a burning desire to be famous, presented Piltdown Man to the scientific establishment and was widely lauded for his discovery. Unfortunately, forty-odd years later, the arrival of carbon dating revealed that the bones were bogus, faked to look ancient, and that Piltdown Man was a hoax. I covered the story and background in fair detail in my post on 2nd May Discovered - Piltdown Man - not just a skull and jawbone! His very grave!
I was referring to Charles Dawson's grave. I'd had a look at it, and noticed that the flowery carvings on the cross that stood at the head of the grave appeared to contain a couple of reptilian-looking bits.
When Mr Dawson died unexpectedly in 1916 ('twas the certain fate of all that do meddle with the dead, mumbled the sage villagers of Piltdown in their curious Sussex dialect, so similar to my own) his sensational discovery, and the fame and scientific acceptance that flowed from it, were still recent events. Nobody would have thought it strange or unusual to celebrate such an important contribution to science. But perhaps his widow decided not to give instructions for a full nude rendition of Piltdown Man, nor even just the creature's grinning skull.
However, she might have thought it appropriate to include a reference or two to contemporary dinosaurs, her late husband's passion. And when I first examined the grave, and the first photos I took, I thought there might indeed be ancient reptiles lurking in the carvings. It needed a jolly good second look, in the right kind of light. And before anyone chortles, and scoffs in mirth, and tries to point out to me in a condescending manner that 'dinosaurs died out millions of years before humans evolved', let me remind them that in the Fred Flintstone cartoons of the early 1960s, the family pet was a doglike dinosaur named Dino. It's all at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flintstones. So there.
Thus my mission on a return visit was look closely at the carvings, and come away with photos that would stand as proof, one way or the other.
So, without further ado, here are the pix. I invite you to study them. Empty your mind of ape-men. Or Tyrannosaurus Rexes. Or velociraptors. Just look at what is there.
The main place for lurking reptilia seemed to be towards the base of the cross, so I've taken several shots of that part, at varying distances, just in case distance matters.
Well, I don't know about you, but I can't (now) see anything suggestive of prehistoric animals, half-hidden or not. Just flowers and foliage of various kinds, somewhat worn by a hundred and four years of weathering. I have to say, it must have been a fancy bit of carving when new, although not the sort of thing a practical man of science would necessarily have chosen for himself.
End of story, I think.
