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Hobbit Is A New Species
Migraineman writes "Over the last year or so, archaeologists in Indonesia unearthed skulls and bones from eight proto-humanoids. Critics have claimed the meter-tall specimens were either pygmies or "aberrant individuals with a pathological condition" like microcephaly. A recent article in Science[subscription] rebuffs the critics, and claims that the specimens are actually a new species - Homo floresiensis. There's a summary article over at Nature."
Frodo died???
Homo Florescent lights?
I wonder if they found anything buried in its pocketses.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
the island of flores saw the amazing uptick in tourism that new zealand experienced after the lord of the rings movie trilogy, and so that island's tourism proponents decided that they could get in on the tolkien tourism bandwagon too
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I for one welcome our new Hobbit-humaniod overl... Oh nevermind.
Scientific American
(I didn't have to subscribe, YMMV.)
This tagline brought to you by 1500 monkeys in just under 17 years.
Scientific name: Bilbous Bagginsis
Common name: Tricksy Hobbitses
I truly believe these little people are the early prototype of ancient time traveling alien/human hybrid race. These people are the result of an extra-terrestial alien race mating with primates. The aliens have left but they will be back to check on our progress.
Nope. This is a new development on an older story (specifically, the story you read in the paper a few months ago).
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
The whole idea of a missing link is a sham. It's a straw man put up by creationists. Because of the way evolution works you won't ever find a completely smooth transition from one form to another, you observe a puntuated equilibrium in the fossil record.
No, it couldn't be a "missing link". The leading guesses are that it is either an alternate branch that evolved an advanced brain separate from the more recent human lineage, or it is a branch off of Homo erectus that subsequently lost size but retained brain form. Personally, I'm a creationist. Keeps things simpler ^^.
But what, then, happened to all the elves?
Continental drift. The undying lands ended up at the north pole.
TFA didn't have it, but there's an artist's rendering of this species here (from http://www.mi.uib.no/~respl/tolkien/mapdocs/index2 .html)
One dead body does not a new species make.
if it shows sufficient differences from other species, it certainly does.
While apparently the movie is bad, I thought the book this is based on is very interesting. The author's name is Vercors (French) and the book (in English translation) is called You Shall Know Them. I read it in Russian, in a collection of best French SciFi.
Anthropologists discover "a missing link" (still living, unlike our hobbits), and that forces them to try to look into the question of whether they are human or not (do they have human rights?). It forces them to try defining what makes a human being. This involves a court case (which is what most of the book is about). Overall, it has little to do with SciFi, and a lot
with philosophy. Which is probably why the movie sucked.
- A few ordinary pygmies and a microcephalic,
- An extraordinary group of Homo sapiens,
- Descendants of Indonesian Homo erectus, or
- Something completely different.
Carl concludes that these new results make 3 or 4 most likely, explaining why "explanations 3 and 4 seem to come out strongest at the moment. Either one would mean that the Hobbit represents an amazing experiment in hominid brain evolution. They suggest that some human-like features emerged in hominids that were separated from us by two or maybe three million years of evolution. Yet their brains were mosaics, sharing features with us and with other hominids, and also had features of their own. These strange brains, Dr. Morwood argues, allowed Hobbits to do things some pretty elaborate things, such as butcher dwarf elephants or make fires. It would be wonderful to know how these strange brains were wired together, but we have to be content with their shadows. But even shadows can sometimes reveal a lot."For anyone interested in Hominid species, here is a list and description of 20 main hominids, here are sample fossils for these species, and data on trends in brain sizes by species.
And to hit the pause button on any creationist "there are no missing links" arguments, take a close look at the comparison of hominid skulls, from the very useful 29 Evidences for Macroevolution FAQ -- each evidence complete with examples, references, predictions, and falsifiability tests (the latter two necessary for a theory to be a scientific theory). A shaved and suited Homo erectus is *not* going to be mistaken for a modern Homo sapiens, not with that small brain and strange face (compare especially the forehead and canines, and that he actually uses his wisdom teeth. Ours are on the way out). But he'll obviously be human- upright, great walker, up to 6 feet tall, briefcase filled with stone tools and a fire-starter kit.
And because at least a few of these claims show up in Slashdot threads on biology, here is the Index of Creationist Claims -- CC0 through CC150 covers human evolution -- and the arguments even creationists say to stop using. If your creationist argument is in the index, how about countering the evidence in the index instead of just making the claim?
According to Tolkien, Minas Tirith was about at the latitude of Venice, and the Shire does correspond more or less to England. Don't trust the movies; they compressed the geography tremendously. (You'd never guess from the climactic scene that Barad-dur was supposed to be over 100 miles from the gates of Mordor now, would you?)
And the brethren went away edified.