Flo’s Little Brain - The Fossil Chronicles - page 112

paper was accepted, pending revisions, and the final revised paper
was accepted on February 11. Even better, Science intended to publish a
preliminary version of the paper online in Science Express on March 3,
which was 10 days before the NGS film would appear. The paper, “The
Brain of LB1, Homo floresiensis, ” would have ten authors from Australia,
Indonesia, and the United States. 5 We had no idea of the controversy it
was about to generate.
hobbit's brain
Our in-depth research supported our initial observations about LB1's
endocast —and more. In addition to measurements of the specimens
shown above in figure 17, we collected measurements from endocasts
of seven chimpanzees, seven humans, and four additional Homo erectus
specimens from China and Java. We used the measurements to generate
six ratios (such as height/length) that together captured information
about overall brain shape, which Scooter then analyzed statistically.
Our results confirmed that LB1's endocast resembled those from Homo
erectus, in each anatomical view. For example, unlike all the others, the
endocasts from LB1 and Homo erectus appeared wider on the bottom than
on the top when seen from either the back or the front. Things were
looking good for the dwarfed- Homo erectus hypothesis.
Or were they? In several ways, LB1's endocast did not look like those
of Homo erectus, or any of the other specimens for that matter. Instead,
it had a surprisingly advanced shape for such a small brain. Similar to
those of humans, LB1's occipital lobes protruded posteriorly, causing
the back end of the cerebral cortex to project noticeably farther than the
cerebellum, which was tucked forward underneath the occipital (visual)
cortex (arrow 1, figure 18). This occipital protrusion has traditionally
been attributed to posterior displacement of the visual cortex by an
expansion of the neighboring association cortex, which integrates infor-
mation from seeing, hearing, touch, movement, and memory. 6 Although
this rearrangement of cortex has long been thought to be associated