Hobbit debate goes out on some limbs

ScienceNews ^ | May 8, 2010 | Bruce Bower

[decimon]

Two fossil hobbits have given what’s left of their arms and legs to science. That wasn’t enough, though, to quell debate over hobbits’ evolutionary status at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists on April 17.

Since 2004, the discoverers of unusual “hobbit” fossils on the Indonesian island of Flores have attributed their find to a pint-sized species, Homo floresiensis, that lived there from 95,000 to 17,000 years ago. These researchers also suspect, on the basis of hobbit anatomy and recent stone tool discoveries on Flores, that H. floresiensis evolved from a currently unknown hominid species that migrated from Africa to Indonesia more than 1 million years ago.

Critics say the finds represent nothing more than human pygmies like those still living on Flores. In their opinion, the centerpiece hobbit find — a partial skeleton of an adult female known as LB1 — is what’s left of a woman who suffered from a developmental disorder that resulted in an unusually small brain and a misshapen skull and lower body.

But arm and leg fossils from LB1 and a second hobbit appear robust, not unhealthy, according to a new study directed by William Jungers of Stony Brook University in New York. The bones display humanlike thickness in the tough tissue that forms the outer shell of most bones, and opposite sides of the limb bones exhibit comparable thickness, a sign of healthy growth, said Stony Brook anthropologist and study coauthor Frederick Grine, who presented Jungers’ paper at the meeting.

[decimon]

Via SunkenCiv.

[decimon]

Truncated history ping.

[bitterohiogunclinger]

“is what’s left of a woman who suffered from a developmental disorder that resulted in an unusually small brain and a misshapen skull and lower body.”

Discussin Nancy Peeloosy again?

[Caesar Soze]

Critics say the finds represent nothing more than human pygmies like those still living on Flores. In their opinion, the centerpiece hobbit find — a partial skeleton of an adult female known as LB1 — is what’s left of a woman who suffered from a developmental disorder that resulted in an unusually small brain and a misshapen skull and lower body.

It seems unlikely that a person with such developmental disabilities would survive to adulthood in the stone age, or that enough of them survived that one was fossilized.

[Buggman]

Why? Did one of them have only nine fingers?

Shalom.

[camerongood210]

They really did exist!

[STD]

This article was a little ‘SHORT’ on scientific details!

[SunkenCiv]

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[colorado tanker]

Well, as long as it's for science, sure I'll donate 'em.

[SunkenCiv]

Makes me wonder about the “hobbit” family tree...

[colorado tanker]

I didn't realize there were serious questions about the first find. They're going to need to find more specimens before we'll get a good feel for what this is all about, i.e. if we really have a new species here, IMHO. It's sure interesting, though.

The article says the ultimate origin is Africa, but I wonder if that's just an assumption on the author's part.

[SunkenCiv]

The first find was allegedly vandalized and withheld by someone who claimed they were nothing to write home about, and it took a year or two I think it was to get the stuff back. Meanwhile, the fossils were condemned as dwarfed and microcephalic but otherwise normal modern humans. It was a circus. It reminded me of Virchow’s foolish and escalating phony claims about the Neandertal fossils:

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~bramblet/ant301/two.html

“Rudolph Virchow (1821-1902), professor of pathological anatomy at the University of Berlin and founder of the field of cellular pathology... believed that people of the Stone Age were identical in biology to modern humans and he attributed the different anatomy of the Neanderthal to a combination of severe rickets, repeated fractures, and severe arthritis. The Neanderthal specimen thus was relegated to controversy.”

His later version was to claim that the remains were those of a 18th century Cossack soldier who’d fled some defeat and hidden in that cave.

[Little Bill]

This whole "Out Of Africa" thingy is wearing on my mind, whats left of it. I have been reading about this for 50 years, a couple of years less than Blam, and even with DNA it still makes no sense.

The argument is Bones and Genetic Diversity. If you remember the Eoehippus, Prohippus, Hippus argument A does not always equal B. The same goes with Genetic Diversity if MCDNA is more or less static where would it be more diverse at the tip of the spear or the shaft.

[blam]

Hobbit Hand Waves Away Doubters

Mike Morewood, the archeaologist who did the original excavation on the Hobbits, says they look more like the guys in the article below:

Stranger In A New Land (Archaeology)

"Image: JOHN GURCHE PORTRAIT OF A PIONEER With a brain half the size of a modern one and a brow reminiscent of Homo habilis, this hominid is one of the most primitive members of our genus on record. Paleoartist John Gurche reconstructed this 1.75-million-year-old explorer from a nearly complete teenage H. erectus skull and associated mandible found in Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia. The background figures derive from two partial crania recovered at the site.

[Little Bill]

The thing that has always bothered me is that the remnants are at the fringes. Adman Islands, Hottentots, Bushmen, and Abos and Melanesians. It is like an expanding balloon.

The prime example is Africa, don't make no sense.

[blam]

"The thing that has always bothered me is that the remnants are at the fringes. Adman Islands, Hottentots, Bushmen, and Abos and Melanesians. It is like an expanding balloon."

Yup.

The oldest DNA in the world is found in a Negrito tribe in Malaysia. I used to know the name of these people, their name starts out with two o's Oo....(something)

[Little Bill]

Look at Africa. It seems to me that there was migration to rather than from, I love demographics.

[blam]

Humans Migrated Out Of Africa, Then Some Went Back, Study Says

[Little Bill]

...but 30,000 years later some of them moved back.

Who were the some and who were not the some that didn't move back and what happened to them?.

Then we have the problem of the five genetic Isolates among modern people as posted lately.