Flo’s Little Brain - The Fossil Chronicles - page 110

“Whooa,” said Scooter. “That puppy looks more like LB1's than any
of the others!” He was right, as you can see from figure 17. Like the Homo
erectus woman, LB1's virtual endocast was relatively long and low and
had a bit of a dent at the top near the back. Interestingly, this distinctive
shape was typical for classic Homo erectus endocasts from China and Java.
We made similar comparisons of the virtual endocasts, as viewed from
the front, back, top, bottom, and the left side. The results were always
the same. LB1's virtual endocast most resembled that of the female Homo
erectus, and it looked least like that of the microcephalic Homo sapiens.
David seemed pleased. Some of the comparisons that we made and
our initial thoughts about them made the cut in David's NGS film, Tiny
Humans: The Hobbits of Flores. 4 We were incredibly excited by our initial
observations, although we knew a mountain of work was ahead of us in
analyzing the virtual endocasts scientifically and preparing a paper with
Morwood's team. Here is the entry from my diary for December 9, 2004:
Scooter and I were first in to work. Filmed with David all day ('til 10 pm!).
David Hamlin is a true mensch. He made us do a gazillion retakes. . . .
Meanwhile, talking with Fred Prior about the future. I am happy with the
filming—think we walked the fine line. Kirk scaled all of our images to
Hobbit's size—Who does she look like? Homo erectus—that's who! But with
a diference—area 10. Yippee Skippee. P.S. She ain't a microcephalic! [The
reference to area 10 is to a remarkable feature in LB1's frontal lobe that is
discussed below.]
I stayed in St. Louis the next day to help plan our research on LB1's
brain. When I picked up voice mail from Tallahassee, there was a mes-
sage from Michael Balter, who is a terrific science writer and journal-
ist for Science magazine ( Nature 's American rival). Balter had phoned to
discuss some research he was writing about. Because I trusted him and
was so excited about LB1's virtual endocast, I phoned him back, swore
him to secrecy, and spilled. He suggested that we consider submitting a
report to Science, and I e-mailed Morwood that day to see if he approved
of the idea and to give him information about how the filming had gone.
Morwood responded that he and his collaborators would be happy to