Archaeoraptor
Archaeoraptor liaoningensis is a fake fossil (made from two different animal species) , a chimera .
The fossil found in July 1997 in the Chinese province of Liaoning , which had already been hailed as a “ missing link ” between dinosaurs and birds , turned out to be a clever fake two years later. A Chinese farmer had completed a bird skeleton with tail bones of different origins in order to be able to obtain a higher price for the find on the fossil market.
Stephen Czerkas, owner of a dinosaur museum in Utah , bought it in early 1999 and contacted the National Geographic Society . The “sensational find” in the November 1999 issue was presented in the associated magazine. But soon after the publication, the first doubts arose.
Extensive investigations carried out by the Chinese palaeontologist Xu Xing , among others , made it possible to establish in 2000 that the tail of the falsification comes from an unknown species, the dromaeosaur Microraptor zhaoianus , the smallest theropod found to date .
In 2002 the systematic allocation of the front part was also clarified . If, after computed tomography examinations, it was initially assumed that up to five individual specimens of two or more species could have been involved, Zhonghe Zhou , a colleague of Xu, was able to prove that the fossil bones came from only one animal. It is the most complete skeleton to date of Yanornis martini , a bird from the Lower Cretaceous .
Even if it is a fake, the parts of the fossil assembly are definitely of scientific value.
See also: Fraud and Forgery in Science