Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called 
National Geographic has an interesting article on the 1470 reconstruction that has created such a fuss. It mentions a couple of new items, the most interesting of which is this by Henry McHenry:
And Henry McHenry, an anthropology professor at University of California, Davis, said Bromage faced some sharp questioning from colleagues when he first presented his findings at a symposium on human evolution in South Africa last year."I am a bit skeptical that Tim's version is all that much superior and that the original reconstructions violated principles of craniofacial development," said McHenry.
Kambiz discusses the subject too.
In other news, Tim Jones has a post on the Ancient Human Unearthed In China. Hawks has some comments as well
Comments
John Hawks provided some excellent analysis of an earlier MSN story back on March 31st. Just using Photoshop, he corrected a very misleading image provided by Bromage. He also says that the idea of reduced cranial capacity is utter nonsense.
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/fossils/habilis/er/bromage_1470_2007.html
Posted by: Paul Wren | April 6, 2007 2:19 AM
I dunno whether a "reduced cranial capacitiy is utter nonsense" in the case of 1470. But Hawks did point out that Bromage did not have the skull oriented to the Frankfurt plane, which is an important starting point. The way Hawks oriented it, yes, there were some differences from the original reconstruction, but they were relatively minor.
Anne G
Posted by: Anne Gilbert | April 6, 2007 1:39 PM