was a twentieth-century Japanese

Japanese people

The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...

 palaeontologist noted for his claim to have discovered fossil

Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

s from the Silurian

Silurian

The Silurian is a geologic period and system that extends from the end of the Ordovician Period, about 443.7 ± 1.5 Mya , to the beginning of the Devonian Period, about 416.0 ± 2.8 Mya . As with other geologic periods, the rock beds that define the period's start and end are well identified, but the...

 period of miniature animals, ranging from humans to dinosaurs, and more than one thousand other extinct "mini-species", each less than 0.25 mm in length. He claimed that "There have been no changes in the bodies of mankind since the Silurian period ... except for a growth in stature from 3.5 mm to 1,700 mm."

He was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize

Ig Nobel Prize

The Ig Nobel Prizes are an American parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early October for ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. The stated aim of the prizes is to "first make people laugh, and then make them think"...

for his work in 1996.