Hobbit Limbo?
…In Friday's issue of Science, Michael Balter reports that a prominent Indonesian anthropologist, Teuku Jacob of Gadjah Mada University, thinks Homo floresiensis was a microcephalic. He has taken possession of the fossils to study them, and this has a number of researchers worried. Jacob is known to guard fossils in his vault, and so he may essentially be making it impossible for other researchers to look at them. Balter quotes one of the authors of the original report on the fossils, Peter Brown of the University of New England in Australia, saying, "I doubt that the material will ever be studied again."
Let's hope Peter Brown's prediction turns out to be wrong, otherwise the creationists will no doubt start crying foul—for once, with total justification. In fact, I'm sure they're already crying foul. Next, no doubt, some Darwinians will start accusing this Teuku Jacob of being in league with the god-botherers.
…Oh yes, and while I'm at it, let's not call them hobbits.