Finally, more brains.
On Tuesday I wrote about how the second batch of Homo floresiensis bones had at last seen the scientific light of day. Today the critics who don't think the Hobbit is a new species are making their way into scientific journals as well. They're saying that the Hobbit brain looks an awful lot like a human brain.
Last year, as I described here, Dean Falk of Florida State University and her colleagues reported on a scan they had made of the braincase of Homo floresiensis. They compared it to the braincase of normal humans, of a human born with a congenital defect called microcephaly, and the braincases of other hominid species. Falk concluded that the brain did not belong to a human. While the Hobbit brain is small (about a third the size of a normal brain) it had several key differences in shape compared to the ...
