Flores hominid bones returned

"After a contentious sojourn in the lab of a senior Indonesian paleoanthropologist, most of the ancient hominid bones from the Indonesian island of Flores, published to acclaim in Nature last fall, are back in a new secure storage facility at their home institution, the Centre for Archaeology in Jakarta.

Two leg bones from LB1, the 17,000-year-old type specimen nicknamed "The Hobbit" because it is so tiny, were left behind for additional study."

'Jean-Jacques Hublin, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, said Jacob [Teuku Jacob, professor emeritus of paleoanthropology of Java's Gajah Mada University], has been treated unfairly.'

"The way it's presented in most of the media is that a group of scientists has made a fantastic discovery, and this discovery has been 'stolen' by an old Indonesian scientist. "I do believe it's a case of Western arrogance."

See: Flores hominid bones returned. By Tabitha M Powledge, The Scientist, 28 Feb 2005.