![]() The local army luitenant Jean Baptiste Drouin was also an avid collector of fossil specimens, and both Drouin and Hoffmann were in correspondence with the famous amateur geologist Petrus Camper about the finds. Faujas de Saint-Fond probably never paid anything and the entire account seems to have been fabricated by him to liven up his book. Godding was the original owner, Hoffmann never possessed the fossil, and there was no lawsuit. However, of this famous story very little can be substantiated by archival evidence. Whether or not this story was based on fact, De Saint-Fond saved the specimen for science, promising a considerable reward to Godding to compensate for his loss. ![]() Afterwards another local amateur geologist, the local canon priest Theodorus Joannes Godding (1722–1797), claimed his rights as landowner and forced Hoffmann to relinquish his ownership through a lawsuit, won by influencing the court. When the second skull was found in 1770, Hoffmann supposedly lead the excavation. ![]() According to him Dr Hoffmann paid the quarrymen when they informed him of fossil finds. In 1798 Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond published his first volume of a monumental natural history series, called Histoire naturelle de la montagne de Saint-Pierre de Maestricht, which also contained an account of the circumstances of the find. The second skull, engraving from the 1799 book by Faujas de Saint-Fond
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