Hobbits Unleashed

Carl Zimmer has a great summary of the continuing saga surrounding the Homo floresiensis discovery. There are allegations of academic misdeeds and outright shenanigans! The impact on the ancient world of our imagination is such that people are either shocked or delighted by the implications, and some are desperately trying to harness the ur-flow of this mighty meme-stream.

10/12/2005 10:33 AM

UPDATE: Here's a year-old SciAm interview with Prof. Peter Brown who speaks for the Hobbit discovery team. Since then, he has apparently decided that the taxonomy requires a new genus somewhere between homo and australopithicus. He is also now expressing doubts about the dwarfing hypothesis, but has the evidence to prove that the microcephaly challenge is false.