I don’t really appreciate how the press is handling this news. There’s a lot of conjecture being spun, such as absurd captions that read, “The tribespeople are likely to think the plane that took this photograph is a spirit or large bird.” Really? How do you know for sure that they think the plane is a bird or a spirit, Michael Hanlon? Perhaps they are just scared out of their minds that there are people in the air? I think it is pretty pitiful that outsiders really belittle tribal peoples, especially in scenarios like this where we know little to nothing about them!

Anyways, it is pretty phenomenal news. The irony is that last year, almost to the date, another previously uncontacted tribe in the Amazon was discovered — the Metyktire.

Instead, I wanna wish y’all a good weekend. I hope this Gary Larson Far Side comic will put as big of a smile on your face as it did mine. Thanks for Eric of the Primate Diaries for finding this gem.

UPDATE (Feb. 4th, 2008): A representative of Gary Larson sent me a take-down notice. They asked for me to remove this cartoon. I’m complying to avoid legal action from them, even though they didn’t threaten to escalate it to that level. In lieu of the cartoon, that we all enjoyed in good humor, I’ll be including a screen shot of the email I received. Feel free to send any correspondence in regards to this issue to Andrea Fryrear, the lady representing Creators Syndicate.

Even if you hold a fairly loose definition of mummy, it is, in my opinion, a pretty pitiless mistake to call a fossil hominid, a mummy… specially from a source like TIME. To clarify, in archaeology and anthropology, a mummy is defined as,

“A mummy is a corpse whose skin and dried flesh have been preserved by either intentional or accidental exposure to chemicals, extreme cold, very low humidity, or lack of air when bodies are submerged in bogs. “

Furthermore, to add insult to injury, here’s how they caption the Dikika hominid that was revealed last year:

“Hominid Child: The complete skeleton of a hominid child who lived at a key stage in primate evolution more than three million years ago. The child is thought to have died at the age of three.”

Dikika is not a complete skeleton. The Dikika hominid consists of a virtually complete skull, a torso with most of the bones from the upper body such as the scapulae and ribs, and parts of the arms and legs. While the bones that were recovered were remarkably all articulated, it was not a complete skeleton. Many of the vertebrae, the pelvic girdle, and other bones such as the radius and ulna are not in the collection. This sort of yield is expected from a three million year old hominid. But it is not complete skeleton, and a skeleton is not all what a mummy is.

The other twelve that made the cut are what most of the world calls a mummy:

I don’t know too much about this one. People who not only mummify their dead pets but also cast them in bronze are way out there:

In this view, you see lower dentition of C. abyssinicus, speficially the canine, the first molar, M1, and M3, or the last molar. I’m still waiting to get my hands on the Nature paper, but in this view I think you guys can all see how similar these three teeth are to that of a gorillas, in size and morphology.

In the meantime, you can busy yourself with the photos I’ve uploaded onto my Flickr account. Please check them out and tell me what you think of them. Here are some of my personal favorites:

I want to thank everyone for helping me out with keeping the site updated and very active, but a special thank you goes out to Tim and Carl who kept posts active and moderated comments.