When an editor discovered the Hobbit
Henry Gee, in his review of the book The Discovery of the Hobbit by M. Morwood and P. Van Oosterzee (Nature 446, 979-980;26 April 2007), describes what it was like to read what seemed to be the equivalent of a description of the discovery of a unicorn:
"Many manuscripts received by Nature are full of the confidence of scientists who know precisely what they have found and why it is important. But a paper that landed unannounced on my desk on 3 March 2004 was surprising, not only for the extraordinary discovery that it reported, but for the matter-of-fact, almost muted, tones in which it was described. Reading between the lines, it seemed as if the discoverers of Sundanthropus floresianus weren't entirely clear in their own minds about what manner of unicorn they had unearthed."
He goes on to recount: "The referees responded with one accord. To be sure, the creature was strange, but the strangeness might be a consequence of its size. The skull, though, was clearly that of a member of our own genus, Homo. In addition, one referee commented specifically on the specific name, floresianus, noting that generations of students would dub it 'flowery anus'. The authors duly changed the generic and specific name to Homo floresiensis and, after several iterations, that was the name attached to the fossil when the discovery was published in Nature on 28 October 2004."
See the complete book review here.
