Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
by over three decades, Dubois and Dart both arranged for casts of their
specimens to be produced by Damon and Company in London and
sold to interested individuals and museums, for which each received
royalties.
Dubois understood the utmost importance of writing a monograph
that thoroughly described his discovery and explained its evolutionary
significance. In doing so, he established the standard format for contem-
importance of publishing such a monograph, but his long manuscript
remains unpublished. Morwood, on the other hand, has followed the
more contemporary practice of providing a thorough description of
Homo
floresiensis
in a special issue of the
Journal of Human Evolution.
The issue,
which is titled
Paleoanthropological Research at Liang Bua, Flores, Indonesia,
contains chapters from various experts who analyze
Homo floresiensis
from
a wide range of perspectives, including comparative anatomy, geology,
archaeology, and paleontology.
9
Surprising similarities also occurred in some of the specific details
of the controversial receptions that greeted the discoveries of
Pithecan-
thropus, Australopithecus,
and
Homo floresiensis.
Although Dubois initially
estimated that the long, low, and thick-boned skullcap of
Pithecanthropus,
known as Trinil 2, was from a female whose cranial capacity had been
nearly 1,000 cm
3
, he later lowered the volume to 900 cm
3
, which is in
however, Dubois pointed out that the cranial capacity of the Trinil 2
skullcap was small compared with that of modern humans. Foreshad-
owing reaction to Hobbit, a number of established scientists, including
the British paleontologist Richard Lydekker, suggested that Dubois's
discovery was a “microcephalic idiot, of an unusually elongated type,”
rather than a missing link that was transitional between apes and hu-
the pathologist Rudolf Virchow, foreshadowed Taung by claiming the
skullcap came from an aberrant ape (specifically, a giant gibbon).
12
