"Irreparable" Damage to Ebu Gogo

Posted on Wednesday 23 March 2005 to unknown


Thomas Sutikna of Centre for Archaeology in Jakarta briefly admires his discovery before it is stolen...er, I mean... borrowed by Prof. Jacob.
As Professor Macief Henneberg says in this heated debate with Professor Richard Roberts on the ABC earlier this month:
Let me finally straight out say that we are not discussing fossils at all. Neither the skeleton LB1 or any comparing remaining bones, but we didn't really study them, neither of those are fossilised. They're as fresh bones as those that are excavated - I have excavated several thousands of them - from cemeteries and burial grounds that are a few thousand to several hundred years old. This is not a fossil.
Indeed, these bones are not fossils, that is they haven't become mineralised and turned to stone. Instead they were preserved by the damp oxygen-starved mud of the cave at Liang Bua. Bones in this state are extremely delicate and when they were found, were described as having the consistency of "mashed potatoes" or "mud" and when dried became extremely brittle.

So while Henneberg has elsewhere defended Professor Teuku Jacob professionalism and experience, why is it that that when he had the bones they were handled so poorly?

According to this article in USA Today, the bones have "suffered irreparable damage [...] so extensive that it will limit scholarly research" on the new species. Most of the damage was caused by the application of rubber moulds which made at Jacob's lab, a process which, according to Tim White of the University of California-Berkeley, should never have been attempted on bones of this type. When the discovery team still had the bones in their possession, they chose to make CT scans instead.

Here is an outline of the damage according to the article:
Tony Djubiantono, the Centre's director is still pretty cross, "We have a big dispute with Professor Jacob [...] We didn't give him permission to do any of these things."