Charles Dawson

 was a 20th century amateur archaeologist.

In 1912, he lived in Piltdown and found fragments of a skull in a nearby quarry. He believed it to be a missing link in the evolution of apes into man. The First Doctor, however, recognised it to be an alien skull. He, Vicki and Steven soon discovered that the skull still contained consciousness of an alien female determined to make all males suffer and eventually kill them. Unbeknownst to Dawson, the Doctor replaced the alien skull with a human cranium with an ape jaw attached, knowing from history that this is what Dawson would present to the scientific community.

Asked by Vicki, if Dawson's reputation would be destroyed when the forgery would be discovered, the Doctor replied that this would happen in forty years, already after Dawson's death. (AUDIO: The Suffering)