Sadly, the bones of BB mascot Homo floresiensis were apparently terribly damaged by Indonesian scientist Teuku Jacob who "borrowed" the bones for quite some time and was extremely reluctant to return them. Jacob was not convinced that Homo floresiensis is a new species of "little people" at all, but rather a deformed pygmy. The scientists who discovered the bones claim that the remains were trashed when Jacob's team tried to make rubber molds of the delicate bones. From USA Today:
"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…. (Pesco's profile of White here.)"If some breakage took place on any bone, it must be during the transport in Yogyakarta or from Yogyakarta to Jakarta," Jacob says. "Both mandibles were intact until the last minute in our lab, as proven by photographs taken on the last days." He did not respond to a request for the photos…
Discovery team member (Richard) Roberts scoffs at the notion that travel caused all the damage: "Like the addition of a glued-on chin?"
