Filed Tooth

London, Tuesday, 17 December 1912, 10 pm. In the preparation room of the natural history museum, a rust-coloured skull rests on green velvet: the "Brackenmoor man", found in a gravel pit in the Sussex countryside.

Tomorrow night, Professor Lucius Pendlebury, Keeper of Geology, will present it to the Geological Society as the link between ape and man. He paid £300 from the museum fund for the finds.

Tonight, while cleaning the jaw, the preparatorpreparator Museum technician who cleans, repairs and readies fossils and specimens for study or display. saw something under the lens that should not be there. The professor called the police: if the skull is forged, someone has deceived the museum.

Three people have handled these bones since they came out of the ground. One of them knows which mouth this tooth came from.

Preparation room of a London museum, 1912: a rust-colored skull on green velvet.