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When they find two more I'll stop being skeptical.
I don't by the "spontaneously decomposed" story. Decomposition and/or dessication of the body occur a rate proportional to environmental facilitation of the breakdown of proteins, and is generally facilitated by necrophagous and saprophytic organisms and the microrganisms they introduce. Even a tiny 7cm critter would take more than 24 hours to break down. A fly takes longer than that to break down. Even venoms that break down myofibrous tissues, such as a snakebite, wouldn't reduce a a dead thing to the depicted state. However, on the link the say it was kept in a fridge, which would explain the dessication (cold plus lack of moisture).
...if it's not a Piltdown Man type gig, I'd say from the body shape that it's a foetus that has been spontaneously aborted. The angles of the photograph don't provide sufficient data for me to guess at a family. It could be a marsupial rat or mole or something opossumlike, or a rodent, insectivore, or even a primate akin to a tarsier or loris. Most foetuses look pretty humanoid, so the possible range remains large.
It seems to me that conclusions are being drawn on the basis of the skull shape and proportional size...my eyebrow arches Spock-like over the fact that the photos don't show the pelvis or legs of the critter...which would tell a lot more about the speciation of the thing on a casual-observer basis. Just the presence of tail bones would shorten the suspect list, as would the structure of the pelvic-girdle/thighbone interface. Skulls are funny, especially if you look at them across foetuses and neonates, 'cause they're always proportionally large. That isn't a very higher-primate-looking jaw, and I wish I could see the dentition marks. The nasal bones are pretty fragile and contain a lot of cartilage, so it may be that they previously streched to match the jaw, but have been broken off. A basic forensic cranio-skeletal analysis should be the first order of business, not a DNA test. |
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