Inside Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, the bones of the hobbit rested undisturbed for 18,000 years. But no longer.In what is being called a true case of scientific skullduggery, the remains of the newly discovered human species have suffered irreparable damage since entering the care of paleontologists.The damage to the bones of this diminutive being — named Homo floresiensis and nicknamed hobbit by scientists — is so extensive that it will limit scholarly research on the species, say members of the Indonesian Center for Archaeology-based discovery team.Considered the most important discovery in human origins in five decades, the remains are marred by broken jaws and smashed bones."The equivalent in the world of art would be somebody slashing the Mona Lisa and then trying to fix it with chewing gum," says paleontologist Tim White of the University of California-Berkeley, who was not on the discovery team. Reported in October's Nature magazine by a team of Australian and Indonesian researchers, the discovery of Homo floresiensis shocked paleontologists. The beings lived on Flores from at least 94,000 to 13,000 years ago, making them the only human species besides Neanderthals that lived alongside modern man, Homo sapiens, in ancient times.

Despite having chimp-sized brains and standing about 3 feet tall, they hunted pygmy elephants and Komodo dragons using complex stone blades and axes like those then wielded by modern humans.A reconstruction of the hobbit's face is on the cover of April's National Geographic, and the National Geographic Channel's Search for the Ultimate Survivor (April 1, 8 p.m. ET) highlights hobbit links to pre-human species. In November, the research took a bizarre turn into the politics of paleontology. Teuku Jacob of Gadjah Mada University, an Indonesian scientist unaffiliated with the discovery team, took the partly fossilized bones to his lab in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 275 miles away from their repository in Jakarta.

View: Full Article | Source: USA Today