Is fluoride a hoax? Nope, but it did prove the Piltdown Man skull was a hoax!
The longer a fossil is in the ground, the more naturally-occurring fluoride it absorbs from groundwater.
This new method of dating fossils was used in 1953 to show that the Piltdown Man skull was not a new species of early human but a skull that was only several hundred years old.
Read the full tale: Piltdown Man is revealed as fake
A fun ocean fact for this Friday …
Fluoride occurs naturally in ocean water at a concentration of 1.2 to 1.5 mg/L.
A favorite science quote of ours from Albert Einstein …
Science keeps asking questions!
See more in Death of a Genius and Old Man’s Advice to Youth: “Never Lose a Holy Curiosity,” LIFE magazine (2 May 1955) with is statement to William Miller, p. 64, thanks to Google Books providing digitized versions of these historic publications.