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of LB1's endocast were from only one endocast of a modern microce-
phalic. (As just one example, the front end of Weber and his colleagues'
endocast, shown in the middle of the top row of figure 19, is expanded
and curved downward, whereas it is truncated in the side view, shown
at the bottom of that column, in row D. These cannot be images of the
same endocast.) Further, the authors had not used conventional land-
marks when orienting the side view of their endocast. We corrected
the orientation and provided our own comparative illustration (see fig-
ure 19), which included four views of the endocasts from the microce-
phalic used in our Science report (left column), Weber's microcephalic(s)
(middle column), and LB1 (right column). The two main points we made
were that the views of the supposedly single microcephalic endocast
from Germany were from more than one individual and that, rather
than resembling LB1, these endocasts most closely resembled the micro-
cephalic endocast from our Science paper.
We concluded our response by stressing that if Weber's team had
an endocast from a modern microcephalic human that was essentially
identical to LB1's, “they should provide its absolute measurements, illus-
trate its various views (in conventional orientations) compared to LB1,
and clearly delineate the separation of cerebrum from cerebellum.” We
added, “We have done the best we can to reply to this commentary
without this information. . . . If this is the best evidence that can be pro-
duced from a sample of 19 microcephalics, we suggest that the authors
reconsider their position on the microcephalic hypothesis regarding
Homo floresiensis. 37
Clearly, the four images of microcephalic endocasts that Weber's team
had compared with LB1's (figure 19) were neither from one individual
nor identical to LB1's. We did not think these images could be from the
microcephalic specimen whose endocast was supposedly almost identi-
cal to LB1's. (For example, height/breadth = 0.80 in Weber's key endo-
cast compared with 0.79 in LB1 does not make sense when you compare
the middle and right images in row B of figure 19.) Why hadn't Weber,
Czarnetzki, and Pusch shown an image that included four views of their
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