This is getting increasingly bizarre. The fossil bones of Homo Floresiensis, which were spirited away by maverick Indonesian anthropologist Teuku Jacob and have only recently been returned to the Australian team that discovered them, were apparently irreparably damaged during the time they were in Jacob’s care (via The Panda’s Thumb):
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.
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