Posted on 10/09/2006 5:07:07 PM PDT by blam
Taking sides in the battle of the 'hobbit'
05:00 09 October 2006 Jeff Hecht
The battle among paleaoanthropologists over Homo Floresiensis, popularly known as "the hobbit", threatens to become an epic of Lord of the Rings proportions.
The debate rages on over whether the fossil, found on the Indonesian island of Flores, is a separate species or simply a modern human with stunted development.
Now Robert Martin at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, US, claims the controversial fossil, discovered in 2004 was really a Stone Age Homo sapiens (modern human) with a mild form of the condition microcephaly. There are more than 400 genetic variants of this disease, which stunts brain development.
The existence of a species of small-brained dwarf humans just 18,000 years ago on Flores is a mere fantasy, Martin says. He argues that stone tools found at the site were made by normal Homo sapiens, not a separate species of hominids with 400-cubic-centimetre brains.
Evolving dwarfism
Yet just weeks earlier, Colin Groves at the Australian National University in Canberra, published a study in the Journal of Human Evolution (vol 51, p 360), which stated that the Flores skull does not have the shape of a microcephaliac.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Greatest little hobbit there ever was.......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQtyJZhV2lQ
ping
Oh my goodness! LOL
susie
I love it when scientists argue. It generally means that there isn't really enough evidence to provide an answer, so the grant money is still up for grabs. The guessing will continue until a plurality of the community has written a papers supporting one position and have their professional reputations pegged to it. Then that position will become the accepted truth, and all further research to the contrary will be crushed with belittlement.
OMG!! I saw that a couple of years ago. I must have been traumatized because I'd forgotten all about it. Oh man, I love me some Spock and Leonard Nimoy, but what.was.he.thinking???
Couldn't.......look......away.......
.....so...beautiful.....
....should have sent a poet......
I think Peter Jackson had a better take on the story.
"Then that position will become the accepted truth, and all further research to the contrary will be crushed with belittlement."
Good summary.
Those friggin' Hobbit movies were some of the worst load of merde I have ever seen. Just a bunch of annoying twits walkingn through New Zealand.
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Note: this topic is from October 2006. |
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