Another brain scan hobbit paper coming
LiveScience writer Ker Than on the hobbits:
"What we have is a little tiny brain that has four features that you can see with your eyes that are advanced and distributed from front to middle to back," [Dean] Falk said. "In other words, this thing appears to be globally rewired. Those are really advanced features. They're not like humans, they're not like anything."
Robert Martin, curator of Biological Anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago, is not convinced by the new evidence.
One of his major criticisms has to do with the sample of microcephalic skulls the team used.
"They're being a bit naughty about this," Martin said in a telephone interview. "Four of the nine microcephalics were not adults."
Well, we'll just have to wait for the paper to show up at PNAS. Bernard Wood seems convinced:
"Dean Falk and her colleagues have injected some much needed scientific rigor into the debate about the brain of Homo floresiensis," Wood said. "They show that the microencephaly 'explanation' for its size and morphology is untenable. I hope we can now get down to the important task of trying to understand the biology of H. floresiensis without the distraction of non-existent pathology."
Well, that settles that!
- 4/24/2008
- Peter Brown refutes Flores filling claim
- 4/15/2008
- Was Homo floresiensis the tooth fairy?
- 3/6/2008
- Hobbit cretin FAQ
- 10/9/2007
- Tools of the hobbits
- 8/10/2007
- The Liang Bua report
- 8/5/2007
- A hobbit Internationale
- 7/3/2007
- Another diagnosis for a hobbit
- 5/12/2007
- Island hopping
- 4/26/2007
- A guide to fantasy science
- 4/3/2007
- Floresiensis presentations
- 2/7/2007
- Size, shape, and microcephaly
- 1/30/2007
- "I'd be very surprised if the hobbits didn't fall down there."
- 1/29/2007
- Another brain scan hobbit paper coming
- 8/23/2006
- Is this the end for Homo floresiensis?
- 7/20/2006
- Pygmoid, Australopithecus, Homo, yada yada...
- 6/22/2006
- Narrowing down Flores microcephaly
- 6/1/2006
- Mata Menge stone tools
- 5/26/2006
- Cryptomundo hobbit article
- 5/18/2006
- Martin versus Falk on microcephaly
- Hobbit news from Stony Brook
- 3/22/2006
- Kate Wong hobbit update 2
- 3/15/2006
- Kate Wong hobbit update 1
- 3/9/2006
- Wong Flores update
- 3/4/2006
- "The Mystery of the Human Hobbit"
- 12/8/2005
- Is that a Jethro Tull song?
- 12/7/2005
- Give those hobbits a Vegemite sandwich
- 10/14/2005
- If it weren't for those meddling kids...
- From one microcephalic to twenty
- 10/13/2005
- New CT study: LB1 "nearly identical" to microcephalic
- 10/11/2005
- Flores update, October 2005
- News trickling about Liang Bua
- 9/23/2005
- Hobbit backlash building
- 9/16/2005
- Flores interviews on NOVA scienceNOW
- 6/24/2005
- Stalking the wild ebu gogo
- 6/13/2005
- Questioning the Flores dwarf Stegodon remains
- 6/7/2005
- Back to Rampasasa
- 5/4/2005
- Homo floresiensis on 60 minutes
- 4/30/2005
- The Rampasasa Pygmy Somatology Expedition
- 4/9/2005
- Retractions dept.
- 3/26/2005
- A show of "no support"
- 3/22/2005
- Have the hobbits been protsched?
- 3/14/2005
- Homo floresiensis on National Geographic Explorer
- 3/7/2005
- The brain of the hobbit
- 2/21/2005
- You heard it here first :: hobbits are australopithecines!
- 2/18/2005
- Can somebody find these hobbits a mommy?
- 1/16/2005
- The Liang Bua debate, continued
- 1/5/2005
- The Flores find :: more thoughts on Liang Bua
- 11/1/2004
- Is Liang Bua pathological :: update
- 10/31/2004
- Liang Bua :: an australopithecine from Flores?
John Hawks Department of Anthropology
University of Wisconsin—Madison
Copyright © 2007 John Hawks