That gives the story a human interest angle that goes beyond the significance of the find for early primate evolution.
Mr. Klein sold the find for tens of thousands of dollars, while Mr. Daza, predictably enough, "was given ten dollars and a mule," said Terri Ottaway, museum curator at the Gemological Institute of America.
After the filming of a documentary about the find for the National Geographic Channel, Coningham has been dubbed a real-life Indiana Jones – a description that elicits a polite rumble of laughter.
Controversy – including the removal of the bones to a rival laboratory, where they were damaged – dogged the find for a variety of reasons, many of which were described in Mike's book A New Human: The Startling Discovery and Strange Story of the "Hobbits" of Flores, Indonesia (2007).
David Weishampel, a paleontologist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, described the find for the first time here at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.
But Flynn notes that to understand the significance of the find for pinniped evolutionary history, researchers need to determine where Puijila sits in the pinniped family tree by conducting a more comprehensive skeletal analysis that includes modern species.
