Sick Hobbits, Quarrelsome Scientists - The Fossil Chronicles - page 140

II patients, and their limb bones are much thinner than those of Homo
floresiensis. They are also characterized by such low intelligence that
living independently is impossible for them, and no pregnancies have
ever been documented for MOPD II women. 32 Since Homo floresiensis is
represented by at least eight individuals who lived between 95,000 and
17,000 years ago, this species was not only intelligent enough to produce
a sustained record of tool production, hunting, and fire use, but also
fertile. For these and many other reasons that are detailed elsewhere, it
is obvious that LB1 was not afflicted with MOPD II . 33
Despite our reservations about many of the opinions expressed in
their comment, Martin and his colleagues made one very important
point that we knew we would have to address: Our preliminary com-
parative study of LB1's virtual endocast included only one endocast
from a microcephalic. As noted, microcephaly is a complex condition
that can be caused by mutations in different genes as well as by a range
of environmental factors. Additionally, it may or may not be associ-
ated with other pathological conditions. If we really wanted to rule
out microcephaly for LB1, we needed to carry out a scientific study
that included a decent number of endocasts from microcephalics. Our
research was about to be diverted in an entirely new direction because
of the controversy about the legitimacy of Homo floresiensis.
We once again requested (and received) financial support from the
National Geographic Society. The next hurdle was to locate a num-
ber of skulls from normal and microcephalic humans that could be CT
scanned in order to produce virtual endocasts. Although finding non-
pathological skulls was not a problem, locating microcephalic ones
became a challenge. First of all, their cranial capacities had to be within
an acceptable range for appropriate comparison with the capacity of
LB1's. A study of 1,366 normal males and 948 normal females suggested
that the usual practice of defining the upper limits for the brain size of
microcephalics on the basis of certain statistical calculations on data
collected from normal individuals would not be useful, because, for
these samples, the upper limits for male and female microcephalics