Oliver also walked upright.
Posted on 10/27/2004 10:51:55 AM PDT by presidio9
Scientists in Australia have found a new species of hobbit-sized humans who lived about 18,000 years ago on an Indonesian island in a discovery that adds another piece to the complex puzzle of human evolution.
The partial skeleton of Homo floresiensis, found in a cave on the island of Flores, is of an adult female that was a metre (3 feet) tall, had a chimpanzee-sized brain and was substantially different from modern humans.
It shared the isolated island to the east of Java with miniature elephants and Komodo dragons. The creature walked upright, probably evolved into its dwarf size because of environmental conditions and coexisted with modern humans in the region for thousands of years.
"It is an extraordinarily important find," Professor Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum in London, told a news conference on Wednesday. "It challenges the whole idea of what it is that makes us human."
Peter Brown of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, and his colleagues made the discovery of the skull and other bones, and miniature tools in September 2003 while looking for records of modern human migration to Asia. They reported the finding in the science journal Nature.
"Finding these hominins on an isolated island in Asia, and with elements of modern human behaviour in tool making and hunting, is truly remarkable and could not have been predicted by previous discoveries," Brown said in a statement.
Local legends tell of hobbit-like creatures existing on islands long ago but there has been no evidence of them.
DESCENDENT OF HOMO ERECTUS
The hominin family tree, which includes humans and pre-humans, diverged from the chimpanzee line about 7 million years ago. Early African hominins walked upright, were small and had tiny brains.
The new species, dubbed "Flores man", is thought to be a descendent of Homo erectus, which had a large brain, was full-sized and spread out from Africa to Asia about 2 million years ago.
The new species became isolated on Flores and evolved into its dwarf form to conform with conditions, such as food shortages. Flores, which was probably never connected to the mainland, was home to a variety of exotic creatures including a dwarf form of the primitive elephant Stegodon.
Modern humans had reached Australia about 45,000 years ago but they may not have passed through Flores. The scientists suspect the new species became extinct after a massive volcanic eruption on the island about 12,000 years ago.
Brown and his colleagues have found the remains of seven other dwarf individuals at the same site since the first find.
"The other individuals all show similar characteristics, and over a time range that now extends from as long ago as 95,000 years to as recently as 13,000 years ago -- a population of hobbits that seemed to disappear at about the same time as the pygmy elephants that they hunted," said Bert Roberts, one of the authors of the Nature study.
Or in the case of John Kerry, homo classless
Good chart, thanks.
This is fascinating.
The case is less "have reason to believe they are chimps" and more "have reason to doubt anything and everything from the source, and considering we only found one, and we dont have much evidence, we may assume they are wrong."
Either that or "we found a pygmy or dwarf corpse that decayed rapidly"
Point is, this article is a sure jump of the gun. It focuses on only one possible outcome, and provides little information.
If they had more information, they should provide it. Or have you never seen a magazine selling Sea Monkeys?
Coulda died when other chimps chucked their tools at her :p
"If they had more information, they should provide it. Or have you never seen a magazine selling Sea Monkeys?
"
They will provide it, I'm sure, but not in newspapers. The whole thing will be written up in peer-reviewed journals. Of course, only those who bother to read such journals will find out all the information.
Shades of Ringworld.
seriously, I've always looked at chimps, and particularly orangutans, in much the way this creature is described. Not as far removed from us as zoologists would imply, certainly deserving of more respect than to be put on exhibit in a zoo.
Oliver also walked upright.
bump to the top so I can find this later
(Isn't that supposed to be happening somewhere, like in New Zealand, re-using some of the LOTR movie sets?)
Yeah, hopefully not with the rishathra. Although there seems to be plenty of speculation that that occured with the neandertals.
There's another thread somewhere the last day or so that describes eyewitness behavior of these things, they supposedly could speak. Actually, the skull looks fairly human, although the cheekbones and zygomatic arch are heavier and the cranial dome seems a bit lower. The width is apparently greater in relation to height than that of our own. I wonder how the brain relates in terms of relative size compared to body size to that of homo sapiens.
You're right.
One can hope.
Scientist Rejects Flores Hobbit Claim
A senior Indonesian scientist has rejected claims by Australian scientists that small fossilized skeletons found on Flores island, East Nusa Tenggara province, were of an entirely new human species. Senior paleanthropologist Professor Teuku Jacob said Friday the so-called “Homo floresiensis” – dubbed the Flores Hobbit by Australian scientists after the dwarf-like characters in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy novels – was actually a smaller sub-species of modern day Homo sapiens. "The fossils that were found in Flores included a Homo sapiens that lived around 1,300 to 1,800 years ago… The Homo floresiensis is actually a Homo sapiens, the same as us, except its size was smaller,” Jacob was quoted as saying by detikcom online news portal. The professor from Yogyakarta’s Gadjah Mada University said skeletons were part of the Australo-Melanesid race, which had lived across most of the Indonesian archipelago.
Hobbits are poping out all over......http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/search?m=any;o=score;s=%27Hobbit%27%20Brain%20Supports%20Species%20Theory%20
Scientists working with powerful imaging computers say the spectacular "Hobbit" fossil recently discovered in Indonesia had distinctive brain features that could justify its classification as a separate — and tiny — human ancestor.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=624&u=/ap/20050303/ap_on_sc/hobbit_brain_2&printer=1
Science marches on in the Islamic world.Scientists Outraged over Damage to 'Hobbit' RemainsThe damage to the bones of this diminutive being -- named Homo floresiensis and nicknamed hobbit by scientists -- is so extensive that it will limit scholarly research on the species, say members of the Indonesian Center for Archaeology-based discovery team... In November, the research took a bizarre turn into the politics of paleontology. Teuku Jacob of Gadjah Mada University, an Indonesian scientist unaffiliated with the discovery team, took the partly fossilized bones to his lab in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 275 miles away from their repository in Jakarta... The team charges the remains were severely damaged by rubber molds made at Jacob's lab... Much of the detail at the base of the skull was pulled off... The left outer eye socket and two teeth were broken off and glued back. Bits of molded rubber still adhere to some sections... Long, deep cuts mark the lower edge of the hobbit's jaw on both sides, left by a blade used to cut away molded rubber... The chin of a second hobbit jaw was snapped off, losing bone. It was glued back together misaligned and at an incorrect angle... The pelvis was smashed, perhaps in transit, destroying details that reveal body shape, gait and evolutionary history... Jacob says. "Both mandibles were intact until the last minute in our lab, as proven by photographs taken on the last days." He did not respond to a request for the photos... Paleontologist Maciej Henneberg of Australia's University of Adelaide defends Jacob: "I never had any doubts that Professor Jacob and his colleagues did not damage any bones. They are excellent professionals with long experience in handling precious human remains." ...Damage to the pelvis during travel raises "the question of why an evidently very fragile specimen apparently was uncaringly transported from its permanent repository and halfway across Java in the first place," says paleontologist Ian Tattersall of the American Museum of Natural History... In news reports, Jacob dismissed the team's designation of Homo floresiensis as a new species... said the fossils belong to a human pygmy with a brain disorder... Jacob allowed human-origins researcher Jean-Jacques Hublin of Germany's Max Plank Institute to take a small section of hobbit fossil to Germany for genetic analysis. "This is completely unethical," Roberts says. "This is freeloading on our discovery." ...In 1999, anthropologist representatives of 20 countries, including Indonesia and Germany, signed a resolution barring transfer of original hominid fossils from their country of origin without compelling scientific reasons.
USA Today
March 22, 2005
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