Lansing Man

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Lansing Man is the name commonly given to a collection of human remains dug up near Lansing, Kansas in 1902. The remains were found when digging a cellar, and included at least a jaw, and according to various accounts, possibly an entire adult skull, several adult bones, and a child's jaw.

The geological strata in which the remains lay was dated to anywhere between 10,000 and 35,000 years old, predating the last ice age. However, the significance of the remains was dismissed by most archaeologists, not many years after its discovery, on the grounds that they were essentially identical to those of the modern humans indigenous to the region and probably buried intentionally -- and therefore (since many scientists were unwilling to accept the idea that there had been so little evolutionary change in the intervening millennia) the remains were assumed by most not to be as old as the strata in which they were buried. The skull has since been dated to approximately 5,800 years ago.

The Piltdown Man, discovered approximately 10 years after Lansing Man, was later exposed as a hoax.