Reiner Protsch

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Reiner Protsch (born January 14, 1939 in Berlin) is a German anthropologist who published false carbon dating data of human fossils.

Reiner Protsch von Zieten was an anthropologist and carbon dating specialist at the University of Frankfurt. He had studied archaeology at the University of California Los Angeles and got a doctorate in 1973.

Over the years, many of the Protsch's colleagues had begun to suspect his expertise. On 2001 archaeologist Thomas Terberger of University of Greifswald sent fossils Protsch had evaluated for further investigation into the Oxford University.

Protsch had made serious mistakes in carbon dating. He had dated the skull fragment of the "Hahnhöfersand Man", a supposed Neanderthal skull, as 36,300 years old when further investigation proved it was only 7500 years old. Another fossil, of the "Binschof-Speyer Woman", which was supposedly 21,300 years old, was actually only 3090 years old. "Paderborn-Sande Man", supposedly 27,400 years old, was from the 1700s. In one case he had also claimed that a fossil named "Adapis" had been found in Switzerland, which would have meant it was a rarity; it was, however, from France, where other specimens had already been found.

Terberger and British archaeologist Martin Street published their findings and the University of Frankfurt began an investigation. Protsch dismissed the allegations and later claimed that a lab assistant had failed to remove shellac from the samples before testing and therefore the results showed later dates.

In 2004 investigative journalists of Der Spiegel magazine noticed that Protsch's claims of the Prussian aristocratic ancestry were fabricated and therefore his "von Zieten" title was false. He was actually a son of former Nazi party member Wilhelm Protsch. Der Spiegel also claimed that Protsch did not really know how to handle his carbon dating equipment, that he ordered the university to destroy evidence of nazi medical experiments and tried to sell the university's chimpanzee skull collection for $70,000 to an American collector. Protsch claimed that all the disputed fossils were his own property.

The University of Frankfurt suspended Reiner Protsch on April 2004. On February 18, 2005 the university forced him to retire because of "falsehoods and manipulations". The university also stated that he was guilty of plagiarism and had sold university property to collectors.

Although the media have claimed that Protsch had a significant effect in the dating of Neanderthals, he has not been a particularly appreciated figure in anthropological circles for a long time. Therefore paleontologists and anthropologists really do not have to "rewrite prehistory" (professor Chris Springer of London Natural History Museum has stated that the British newspaper Telegraph misquoted him)^{[citation needed]}. None of the fossils Protsch had misdated were scientifically prominent.