Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
them to assess the possibility of LB1's being the remains of a micro-
cephalic human. Toward that end, my colleagues at Mallinckrodt and
I developed a mathematical formula that captures information about
the particular shape features that separate microcephalic endocasts
brain size, we were able to use it to classify LB1's endocast, as well as
those of the Basuto woman and a dwarf who, like LB1, had once been
an approximately three-foot-tall adult female. (These specimens are
labeled “417, f,” “358, f,” and “752, f,” respectively, in figure 22.)
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The
endocasts from the Basuto woman and dwarf classified with the micro-
cephalics, which was not surprising, since they were from a primary
and a secondary microcephalic, respectively. LB1's endocast, on the
other hand, ended up with the normal humans instead of the micro-
cephalics, despite its tiny size and certain of its shape features that set
it apart from humans.
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The bottom line is that the only thing that LB1's endocast has in
common with microcephalic endocasts is its small size. In fact, the
shape of LB1's endocast is the
opposite
of that which typifies microce-
phalic endocasts. Thus, unlike those of microcephalics, LB1's brain had
an occipital lobe that projected farther back than the cerebellum, very
wide temporal lobes with pointed rather than blunted tips, and a frontal
lobe that was wide and had expanded areas at and underneath its most
anterior part (see figure 24).
We were confident that our 2007 study of microcephalic endocasts
would, once and for all, settle the question about whether or not LB1
had been afflicted with microcephaly. To us, she clearly had not. Never-
theless, Martin continued to argue otherwise. For reasons that escaped
us, he incorrectly claimed that we had examined the half-skull of the
Indian microcephalic that was discussed above, and that we then delib-
we never examined either the half-skull or its endocast, although we
had seen photographs of them. We did not seek a copy of the half-
endocast because the photograph showed that the half-skull had been
