Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
five
Referring to the extremely small size of the species, after an
imaginary race of half-sized, hairy-footed characters in the
universally popular
The Lord of the Rings
by J. R. R. Tolkien, . . .
the name Hobbit was, I thought, singularly appropriate: a little
person that lived in a cosy hole in the ground on an isolated
Middle Earth island. LB1 [was] familiar with a type of extinct
elephant and was chased by Komodo dragons—the Flores
version of “Oliphaunts” and the fire-breathing dragon Smaug.
Mike Morwood
On the afternoon of October 27, 2004, I was sitting at the computer in
my study. The phone rang. When I answered it, a man said, “I'd like to
speak with Dean Falk.”
“Uh, this is she.”
“My name's David Hamlin, and I'm from the National Geographic
Society,” he replied.
Because telemarketers make me grumpy, my response was a suspi-
cious, “Yes?” As I contemplated hanging up, he added, “And I'm not sell-
ing yellow magazines.” Hamlin explained that he was a film producer
with National Geographic Television and that he had been wanting to
talk with me for months. But he couldn't until now, he said, because
what he was about to tell me had been embargoed by
Nature
magazine,
and that embargo had only just lifted.
That got my attention.
Nature
is one of the most important scientific
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