jgnat....The hoaxed fossil is not Microraptor, the one subject of the article above, but Archaeoraptor. And it wasn't a hoax where the fossil itself was a fake. What happened is that two fossils belonging to two different specimens were skillfully stuck together into a single fossil. It's a fascinating story of how the forgery was detected....turns out the paleontologist amazingly discovered the other half of the fossil (that is, the interfacing slab) and showed that the upper half wasn't part of the original fossil. The reason the fossil was faked was not to deceive the scientists -- it was all about money. The region where the fossils come from in China has a problem with poverty, and there is a viable market for fossils in the area....but complete fossils are worth more than incomplete ones. So to increase the value, sellers sometimes try to combine fossils out of fragmentary specimens to increase their value. The forged fossil, in fact, is a scientific goldmine because it combines TWO species of bird-like dinosaurs into a single specimen....two species not otherwise known. So the fossil is still scientifically important. I don't know whether the current fossil is a composite or not......I would think that National Geographic wouldn't fall for the same mistake twice (especially how embarrassing the first one was), but I have to wonder (seeing the four feathered limbs!) whether if this isn't a composite as well.