Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
esis seriously, although some did when it first appeared. As science
journalist Elizabeth Culotta reported, “Hobbit watcher John Hawks of
the University of Wisconsin, Madison, says he was initially intrigued
by Henneberg's claim. '[The] hypothesis was reasonable based on the
photos,' he says. With Brown's rebuttal, however, Hawks now considers
the question 'totally settled.'”
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in sickness and in health
Even though controversy about new hominin discoveries sometimes has
a healthy impact on the direction of the field, the debate surrounding
Hobbit has become quite bizarre. Her skeleton was at one point spirited
away by disgruntled colleagues and eventually returned in a damaged
state (which caused an international scandal); other doubters claimed
to have an endocast of a microcephalic that looks identical to LB1's, but
when researchers indicated a desire to examine that specimen, the nay-
sayers repeatedly refused to provide a correct location or museum num-
ber (hence its existence is in doubt); and, as we just discussed, another
colleague published a groundless claim that Hobbit had a dental fill-
ing that proved she was a modern
Homo sapiens.
As I write this, another
debate is emerging about Hobbit's health. Rather than proposing a spe-
cific diagnosis, however, Robert Eckhardt and Maciej Henneberg now
claim that LB1's skull is so asymmetrical that it must be a sign of some
have documented the problems inherent in measuring skull asymmetry
from two-dimensional photographs of LB1's face (the basis for Eckhardt
and Henneberg's assertion) and provided evidence that LB1's cranial
asymmetry was due to distortion from the pressure of burial sediments
to respond to new sick-Hobbit hypotheses, those of us who believe
Homo
floresiensis
is a legitimate discovery are left pondering a huge mystery:
Who were her ancestors, and where (and when) did they originate?
