Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
(one on the hominin material, the other on the archaeology) would be
prepared and submitted to
Nature.
Amazingly, the team managed to keep
the discovery secret for over a year, until the day before the papers
appeared in
Nature
on October 28, 2004.
The reaction to the 2004 announcement of
Homo floresiensis
in
Nature
rivaled the one that had surrounded Dart's 1925 announcement of
Aus-
tralopithecus africanus
in that same journal. As happened with Taung, the
discovery made world headlines. Morwood recalled:
When the discovery was announced all hell broke loose, as the world's media
emailed and phoned our offices and homes—about 200 enquiries a day for
the first week, with Peter [Brown] doing 100 interviews in the first three days.
The interest was overwhelming: we featured on about 98,000 websites and
were headlined in about 7000 newspapers including the
Guardian, Sydney
Morning Herald, Nepali Times, New Zealand Herald,
[and]
New York Times. . . .
The story seems to have made it into every major newspaper around the
world, into most popular news magazines, including in Australia
The Bulletin,
Time, Newsweek
and
The Financial Review,
and was reported as news on most
TV channels and science programs. “It's always a delight to welcome a new
member to the family” was the introduction to the story by one newsreader,
while Deborah Smith of
The Sydney Morning Herald
surmised that, “The find
has also put us firmly on the same evolutionary footing as other creatures on
Earth, something that would have pleased Darwin.”
45
Although Darwin might have been pleased, Soejono and Jacob were
not. To Morwood's dismay, less than a week after the publication of the
Nature
articles, Soejono turned LB1's skull, femur, and mandible over to
Jacob, along with an important new mandible that had not yet been fully
studied. Jacob took the remains to his laboratory in Yogyakarta. Even
though Morwood and the discoverers of LB1 had strongly opposed his
decision, Soejono retroactively arranged permission from ARKENAS
for the transfer, as well as permission for the rest of the
Homo floresiensis
remains to be turned over to Jacob on December 1, 2004, for one month.
That deadline would be extended twice, however, before the bones were
actually returned, about three months later.
