Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
and grooves (gyri and sulci, respectively) of the cerebral cortex was
poor. But then, what did one expect from a cast of a cast?
Meanwhile, in St. Louis, Kirk with his magic machines was exam-
ining the data for LB1's virtual skull. He saw that the skull had been
reconstructed from the raw CT data in Indonesia with an (understand-
able) eye toward getting the outside right but with little attention to the
interior of the braincase. Consequently, there were cracks and voids in
the walls of the braincase. When Kirk flood-filled the skull electroni-
cally, it produced an endocast that reflected these errors and, further,
was somewhat squashed at the back end. What he needed were the
unprocessed CT data from the original scan (which were in slices) so
that he could carefully align the cracks and fill in the small holes of the
braincase that had been caused by excavation and by pressures from
sediments during burial. (LB1 was discovered about 19 feet beneath the
both manual and highly accurate automated procedures) in order to
reconstruct a more realistic virtual endocast.
We requested the unprocessed CT data from Mike, who consulted
with his team and then had them sent to St. Louis. Time was running
short. We were scheduled to film on December 9. We wanted David to
have beautiful images of LB1's virtual endocast for his film, and produc-
ing them in such short order was going to be highly labor-intensive for
poor Kirk. The thought of being part of the National Geographic film
was, of course, exciting. But what really thrilled us was the prospect of
analyzing the brain of this new species. So the clock was ticking double-
time—Kirk needed to hunker down on reconstructing LB1's virtual
endocast, and the rest of us had to come up with a plan for the actual
research that we would begin when I came to St. Louis for the filming.
As with any research, our study would need to focus on specific ques-
tions. Fortunately, it was not going to be too difficult to decide what they
should be, because the announcement of
Homo floresiensis
had prompted
scientists everywhere to start scratching their heads.
What could our study of LB1's virtual endocast contribute to the dis-
