Debunking the Myth of the Oldest Cheetah.
The supposed oldest cheetah fossil, Acinonyx kurteni, was a crude forgery made from plaster, according to Chinese scientists who revealed the fraud before the paper was published in PNAS, a top ten high-impact journal in science. The lead author finally retracted the paper in 2012, admitting it was based on a composite specimen from the late Miocene laterite and not from the early Pleistocene loess. This case demonstrates that fraudulent fossils can be driven by the desire to present and support evolutionary scenarios, which may also suppress any doubts among reviewers and editors.