Abstract In 1884, Arthur Smith Woodward first met Charles Dawson, a solicitor and industrious amateur collector, antiquarian, geologist, archaeologist and palaeontologist. This began a long association and friendship centred on their mutual interest in palaeontology and human evolution. Dawson devised a complicated plot focused around the ancient river gravel deposits at Barkham Manor near the village of Piltdown, Sussex. In these gravels he planted stone tools and fossil mammal remains together with the lower jaw of an ape and numerous modern human cranial bones to deceive the scientific establishment into believing an early human ancestor had been found in his own back yard. Cleverly devised to provide anatomists and archaeologists with evidence for concepts that they wanted to believe were true, Dawson fuelled numerous contentious debates among scientists that quickly attracted international attention. Nothing could be more unfortunate than such a respectable scientist as Arthur Smith Woodward being taken in by the events of 1912, and then subsequently swept along by them well into his retirement right up to the time of his death in 1944.

A variety of xenoliths from the lower crust to mantle transition occur in Quaternary mafic intraplate lavas of the Bayuda volcanic field of northern Sudan. The lower-crust xenoliths include plagioclase- and garnet-bearing mafic granulite. Ultra-mafic garnet-bearing pyroxenite, websterite, hornblendite, and distinct peridotite xenoliths are from the upper lithospheric mantle. Sr, Nd, and Pb isotope signatures distinguish between ultramafic and granulite xenoliths. The latter show a strong compositional affinity to juvenile Neoproterozoic crust. The Pb isotope composition of the ultramafic xenoliths resembles the distinct high-μ signature ( 206 Pb/ 204 Pb >19.5) of their host basanite. These xenoliths may represent cumulates of late Mesozoic to Quaternary mafic intraplate magmatism. The felsic upper crust in a schematic lithospheric profile of the Bayuda area includes predominantly granitoids, migmatites, and metasedimentary rocks that represent reworked old cratonic or juvenile Neoproterozoic rocks. The deep lower crust is represented by mafic granulite, likely cumulate rocks from Neoproterozoic juvenile magmatism. The crust-mantle transition is characterized by ultramafic cumulate rocks possibly from the late Mesozoic to Quaternary magmatism. The peridotites of the same xenolith suites represent typical lithospheric mantle with variable degrees of depletion by melt extraction.