Sick Hobbits, Quarrelsome Scientists - The Fossil Chronicles - page 138

the two microcephalics (figure 21). 22 (Similarly, the comparison failed to
include an image of the Basuto woman's skull.) 23
We were surprised by this comment, because it is unusual for sci-
entists to make assertions based only on sketches. A more typical (and
scientific) approach would have been to quantify comparisons with mea-
surements taken from specimens that had been oriented according to
scientific conventions (such measurements were also available in the
literature for both LB1's endocast and skull) and to provide photographs
of the actual specimens in addition to line drawings. 24
The comment did not stop there. It also asserted that the scaling
of relative brain size in mammals, including fossil elephants that had
lived on Mediterranean islands, indicated that LB1's RBS was far too
small to be explained by the evolutionary dwarfism of Homo floresiensis
from a larger-bodied ancestor. As discussed in chapter 6, however, evi-
dence from foxes and hippopotamuses now suggests that brain size may
scale in unexpected ways relative to body size in animals that become
dwarfed on islands. If so, LB1's small RBS could have been associated
with island dwarfing . 25 Another possible explanation exists for LB1's
small (apelike and australopithecine-like) RBS, namely that she simply
retained this feature from ancestors who were approximately the same
size as Homo floresiensis in the first place—no dwarfing required. 26 As
discussed in the next chapter, there is not yet a consensus about which
of these two possibilities is more likely.
The particular microcephalic skull that we used in the comparisons
for our Science paper was also a source of contention in the comment.
The copy of the skull of a European microcephalic that we imaged had
been borrowed from the American Museum of Natural History and had
been cast in two parts. One part was the cap of the skull, and the other
was the rest of it. Although the two pieces fit together perfectly and pro-
duced a seamless virtual endocast after being CT scanned in St. Louis,
Martin objected strenuously to our use of the specimen, because the
two parts had been cast from different batches of plaster. We saw this as
a red herring, however, especially since our virtual endocast turned out