Word: brained
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...later.) Among the findings: a nearly intact skeleton that the anthropologists said belonged to an adult female who lived as recently as 18,000 years ago yet was only the size of a modern-day 6-year-old. Because the female skeleton looked humanoid rather than human and the brain size was small, the researchers concluded she was not a Pygmy?a short but otherwise normal version of Homo sapiens you still find in equatorial Africa and pockets of Southeast Asia?but a member of an entirely new species whom its discoverers named Homo floresiensis. This species, say the scientists...
...found, itself an event of seismic proportions. Conventional anthropological wisdom holds that animals, in the absence of big predators, shrink to adapt to life on small, closed habitats like Flores, a phenomenon known as island dwarfism. Humans, however, are thought to have evolved linearly, developing bigger bodies and brains. H. floresiensis, relatively modern yet small?but not a Pygmy, according to its supporters?explodes that theory. "[It'd] go completely against the flow of human evolution," says Thorne. "This would undo everything that we are." Even if the island-dwarfing process did indeed shrink H. floresiensis, says Robert Martin, curator...
...argument should have been at least partly settled by a study conducted by a group of Australian, U.S. and Indonesian scientists (including Brown and Morwood) earlier this year that used computer tomography and 3-D reconstruction techniques to model the brain of H. floresiensis. The resulting paper, published in the journal Science in March, contended that the findings supported the theory of a new species and strongly downplayed the possibility of a disease like microcephaly playing a role. But critics remained unconvinced, citing flaws in the study, such as the suitability of skulls used for comparison. Even...
Recognizing sarcasm when you hear it involves a complex sequence of cognitive skills, according to Israeli researchers. People with brain damage in the prefrontal lobe--where language and social cues are processed--don't get, for example, why anyone would tell a slacker, "Don't work too hard...
Gould, who was Agassiz professor of zoology and a professor of geology, died in May 2002, ten weeks after being diagnosed with a lung cancer that had spread to his liver, brain, and other organs...