Fresh scandal over old bones [USA Today]
It would seem that there was good reason Indonesian scientist Teuku Jacob was extremely reluctant to return the Homo floresiensis bones that were recovered on the island of Flores and reported last October in the journal Nature.
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.
(…) 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.
What followed was a standoff that set an older generation of Indonesian and Australian paleontologists against younger scientists. Jacob, 75, is considered Indonesia’s most prominent paleontologist, a role with added status in a country that reveres age and seniority. (much more at USA Today)
This is all too similar to problems with the treatment of the artifacts and remains of Ötzi, the ‘Iceman’.
Note: ‘AFU’ is a technical term primarily used in laboratories and the field when describing someone else’s fuck-up, but seldom your own.
