Posted on Saturday 26 February 2005

Two days late, to be sure, but as they say - better late than never. The bones of Ebu Gogo aka the Hobbit aka Homo Floresiensis have finally been returned by Professor Teuku Jacob to the Centre for Archaeology in Jakarta and are now back into the possession of the scientists who found them.

The remaining concern now is the condition of the returned bones and what this may mean in terms of their possible contamination with other genetic material. Analysing the DNA will be crucial in establishing whether Homo Floresiensis really is a completely different species or just a modern human with a growth deformity. However any analysis claiming to prove the latter (i.e. it's a modern human) is likely to challenged on the issue of contamination.

UPDATE: On the strength of an interview given by in December by Richard Roberts, one of the co-discoverers of Ebu Gogo, John Hawks thinks that Jacobs' theory of a growth deformity seems very unlikely.