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endocasts, just as they can of virtual skulls. I suggested to David that the
film crew needed to go to St. Louis.
Over the years, I have collaborated on many projects with the biolog-
ical anthropologist Charles “Scooter” Hildebolt, which I wrote about in
my book Braindance. Much of our work has been done with Scooter's col-
leagues in the Electronic Radiology (ER) Laboratory at the Mallinck-
rodt Institute of Radiology, which is part of Washington University
School of Medicine, in St. Louis. The ER Laboratory is directed by Fred
Prior, who, in addition to being a stellar neuroscientist, has a master's
degree in anthropology. Add to the mix Kirk Smith, a crackerjack engi-
neer who can do magic with computed tomographic data, and we had
a team that was up to the task (and the huge honor) of processing and
analyzing a virtual endocast from Hobbit and comparing it with virtual
endocasts from apes and other hominins. But would David Hamlin (and
National Geographic Television) go for it? That, said David, depended
entirely on whether Mike Morwood approved of the idea.
I e-mailed Mike in November 2004 and told him that my colleagues
at Mallinckrodt and I would be able to perform sophisticated imag-
ing and morphological studies on a virtual endocast of LB1 if we could
obtain the necessary CT data from Jakarta. I also said that, in addition
to being in the National Geographic film, we would be tremendously
excited to do a scientific study with him and his colleagues that com-
pared the virtual endocasts of LB1, apes, and other hominins. After he
consulted with the other members of his research team, Mike e-mailed
back that we could use the CT scan data and that they would be happy
to collaborate on the proposed research and to have the work filmed
by National Geographic. He outlined reasonable conditions regarding
copyright of the CT scan data, authorship (e.g., we would submit to
high-profile journals), and press releases. My colleagues at Mallinckrodt
and I were thrilled and readily agreed to all of the conditions (figure 14).
The analysis of LB1's endocast was going to be done right!
But it wasn't going to be cheap. Doing research on virtual endocasts
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