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New Hominid Species Unearthed in Indonesia
Radical Rad writes "ABC News is reporting that anthropologists have found the skeletal remains of seven hobbit sized hominids. The population may have been wiped out by a volcanic activity 12000 years ago or according to local legend may have lived up until the 1500's living on in caves and eating food the villagers would leave out for them. Also found were bones of giant lizards and miniature elephants. CBS
also has the story." National Geographic and the BBC have good stories.
clearly there was evolutionary pressure to maintain the same size for all species on the island: giant lizards, pygmy elephants, and small humans.
I dig how they say "Hobbit sized" to capitailize on LOTR's popularity. In '83 they would have said "Ewok sized".
Sweet informative mod.
1. Is there sufficient DNA material at any of the dig sites to allow us to clone a hobbit?
2. Would they make good slaves?
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
everyone knows the world was created 6000 years ago.
jeez.
Guess Frodo, Bilbo and the remaining elves made a wrong turn on the way to the Grey Havens.
CC Licensed Serialized Story and Podcast: Ingenioustries
How can anything be hobbit sized? A hobbit is a fictional creature; it has never existed. Now a troll...
Well see, they were originally only out on a three-hour tour, so when their ship wrecked, they had no way of getting back because they hadn't packed the emergency supplies you would normally expect them to have.
Sure, they had one guy who could make a lot of crap out of coconuts, and they always had some celebrity guests drop in for some wacky hijinks, but they never could quite get off that island. Tragic story, really.
However, if they were smart enough to find a way to this island, couldn't they just do another island-hoping to a bigger island like Sumantra, or even Australia?
Well, maybe they did...but that doesn't debunk the theory. Europeans found their way to the Americas, but there are still Europeans in Europe.
Those nasty hominidses. We hates them!
DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
Is Snow White's house anywhere nearby?
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
Snow White brought in for questioning related to 7 suspicious deaths. Details at 11.
eskwayrd = m^2c^4
RTFA
How can these researchers say for certain that these remains are of anything other than humans?
The skulls are not similar to modern humans, but are similar to Homo Erectus, from which these creatures are thought to descend.
It is more probable that these remains represent a small group of homo sapiens that had genetic development problems, or some other kind of ailment.
See above. It is often debatable whether or not unique features (in this case size) represent a continum or a distinct species. It is not an exact science, and we may never know for sure. However, there is no other example of an adult human being so small.
Pygmies exist in Africa today, but are not considered a new species.
Pygmies are considerbly taller then these "hobbits". Also Pygmies are modern humans, the "hobbits" were not.
This report is more about research scientists getting more grant money than actually using the scientific method.
The findings are being reported in Nature, which has exceedingly high standards. There is absolutely no reason to make such accusations.
Maybe these tiny people have some kind of sickness (or just look tiny), and were therefore exiled from the main(is)land?
And this sickness also made their arms proportionately longer, created more prominent bone ridges above their eyes, gave them a sharply sloping forehead, and no chin? And it affected at least seven known individuals in the same way over a span of 30,000 of years, with no known fossil evidence of any "normal" hominids co-existing on the same island in that time?
Riiiight...
Other than that, it's a lovely place to visit.
That's why I believe the universe was created in the 70's.
In africa, you have some of the tallest tribes in the world in close proximity to some of the shortest. The difference in their environments is not the heat -- the heat is constant -- but rather the humidity. In areas where the humidity is high, being larger does you no good. Sweat won't evaporate so the extra surface area isn't useful.
In areas where the humidity is lower, being taller is a great way to help get rid of excess heat.
However that may not be what's going on on this island at all.
The other lifeforms are textbook examples of foster's rule in action. Foster's rule is the maxim that states that creatures isolated on a small island will experiece dramatic changes in size (or die, adapt or die).
So, for instance, the pygmy elephants got smaller than the elephants they started as because there simply wouldn't have been enough vegatation on the island to support them otherwise. There was EXTREME selective pressure to get smaller, so it happened fast.
Meanwhile, because nothing was around to eat these pygmy elephants, those komodo dragons that were born larger than the others were significantly more fit becuase they might be able to exploit the elephants as a food source (which they did -- they sustained themselves on the elephants until they went extinct, at which time humans brought deer to the islands thus providing them with a new food source).
One creature had selective pressure to get bigger, another to get smaller. In *general*, Foster's rule is that things will get smaller. But occasionally (such as in the example above), the rule can work in reverse.
This immediatly reminded me of the Dropa and the Han from the Bayan Kara-Ula regin near Tibet. Heres a Picture of them. Look around on the web and you can find more information. They were small people. "The Bayan Kara Ula, or Bayan Har Shan, area of China is where the source of Yangtze River is located and where the Mekong River turns south toward Vietnam. It's said to be very isolated and the people there still live in rather primitive conditions, although this is changing very quickly. In January of 1938, a Chinese archaeologist named Professor Chu Pu Tei led a rather routine expedition into these mountains. However, what they discovered in a group of caves shunned by the superstitious local natives was far from routine. In the caves, the expedition discovered a series of graves lined up in rows. On the walls of the caves there were stick-figure drawings of men with elongated heads and representations of the sun, moon, and stars. When they excavated the graves, the archaeologists found skeletons of less than four feet in length with abnormally large skulls." link
Your Momma's so fat she makes emacs look like nano!
So either it is another island they are talking about (possibly in the vicinity of Flores) or their 31sq km figure should read 31 thousand sq km (not likely given the importance of the small size of the island that explains their evolution to a small skeleton).
You can see a detailed map or the archipelago here:
http://www.sel.barc.usda.gov/scalenet/images/indoFlores is approximately at 9S 122E