Responding to the discovery in the Republic of Georgia of a 1.8-million-year-old Homo erectus skull (possessing about one-third the volume of the average human skull), a wag from Seattle under the moniker of “1west,” commenting this morning in the thread beneath The New York Times article discussing the fossil, wrote the following:
It is my contention that these early hominids are still in existence today. We call them ‘Republicans’.
And it was found in Georgia. Okay, it’s not that Georgia, but still.
Prometheus Unbound 
Apparently this find made scientists realize that there can be a lot of variation in skull size among the same species…
Yes, but don’t confuse this with the creationist notion that Homo erectuses were humans. They weren’t (yet).
I was just joking! I meant to say that republicans may also be human.
This is the beauty of science, it is dynamic and data driven. I am curious to see how this finding will survive scientific scrutiny. As a educator and someone still active in research, I am always hesitant when there is a huge announcement like this made to media without being seriously scrutinized by the people in the field. Does anyone recall the announcement that Mono lake bacteria use Arsenic in their backbone. This news was announced prematurely and now there has been serious concerns raised about the conclusions of this study.