More Evidence For Hobbit Sized Species

GogglesPisano writes "CNN.com reports that scientists digging in a remote Indonesian cave have uncovered a jaw bone that they say adds more evidence that a tiny prehistoric Hobbit-like species once existed." From the article: "The discovery of a jaw bone, to be reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, represents the ninth individual belonging to a group believed to have lived as recently as 12,000 years ago. The bones are in a wet cave on the island of Flores in the eastern limb of the Indonesian archipelago, near Australia."

Comments

Re:Or it could be a dwarf

[the phantom]

Traditionally? Speciation occurs when the decendant* line can no longer interbreed with the ancestor* line to produce viable offspring. Sickle cell anemia could be considered an inherited genetic disorder that is possibly a response to Malaria, yet the large populations of Africans that tend to have either full or partial expression of the trait are not a genetically distinct population -- they are still capable of reproducing with other Africans, Europeans, Asians, American Indians, or any other human population.

Defining species from fossils and bones can be a bit trickier -- can you prove that this population is (a) represented by these bones, (b) genetically distinct, and (c) incapable of creating viable offspring with any other 'human' population.

I would also like to note that there are a great variety of human populations. In Africa alone, there are groups that tend to be quite short and robust, and groups that tend to be quite tall and gracile. In a fossil record, they might bee seen as distinct species, yet we know that they can have children together. Just one of the hazards of fossils, I suppose.

* ancestor and decendant, are, of course, relative