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Scientists Hope To Settle "Hobbit" Debate
Several readers wrote in with news of the debate around the identity of an ancient woman whose diminutive skeleton was found on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2004. Fox News reports that Australian scientists have discovered a subterranean chamber that may contain DNA proof that will settle the question of whether "the Hobbit," as the specimen is called, actually is a representative of a new branch of the human family, or not. The find's discoverers named the putative new race Homo floresiensis. Others in the anthropological field question this identification, arguing that the meter-tall Hobbit was a modern human who had something wrong with her. In a paper just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, with one of the original discovery team as co-author, researchers say they have compared the Hobbit's skull to those of modern humans with various ailments such as microcephaly, and that the Hobbit is different.
Another one of Tolkien's races has been discovered: Trolls, it seems, are native to the slashdot community.
Now they will have to find what came between Homo Sapian and Homo Floresiensis. /ducks for cover.
Others in the anthropological field question this identification, arguing that the meter-tall Hobbit was a modern human who had something wrong with her.
Maybe she just hobbitually ate a poor diet.
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Others in the anthropological field question this identification, arguing that the meter-tall Hobbit was a modern human who had something wrong with her.
Right -- they're the ones that don't get the publicity or funding. Come on, how boring is that -- that the meter-tall body was just an abnormal human? Wouldn't it be so much *cooler* if there were a whole race of these!
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
For whatever reason, the summary links to page two of the article. Page one is here
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
If this represents a new species of human, and given how recently this species is shown to have lived, then whole textbooks on the subject will likely need rewriting. I find it quite exciting, and I'm not even an anthropologist.
As an aside, I'm also quite interested to see what the bible-thumpers eventually come to make of all of this.
Paul Verhoeven
Kevin Smith
George Lucas
Allan Parker
Steven Spielberg
Ridley Scott
Beorn(who?)
or CowboyNeal?
What?
or does anyone else find it striking that Foxnews.com has an "Evolution and Paleontology Center" (http://www.foxnews.com/science/evolution/). Certainly, W doesn't approve of this.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
There is line in the bible that says something like "There were midgets in the earth in those days" I am sure of it.
Wouldn't it be interesting if we hadn't likely killed off all these competitors in prehistory and some were left around. What kind of rights would neanderthals get? Surely they wouldn't be treated like animals. And if they were still around, I think religion would be a very different thing.
My question is why the hell is their an Einstein icon. He was a physicist for *@!$'s sake.
Can't we get an icon of Dawkins? Or are we to assume that physics and biology are one in the same?
National Geographic had a whole hour long special on this subject that I watched about 4 or 5 months ago. As the article below states, there was MORE than one set of bones found, while the girl mentioned in today's articles was the only COMPLETE skeleton, there was several other partial bone sets recovered that were equally comparable in size. Also in the documentary they rebuilt the skull and sent it to several specialists, who confirmed that it was in fact not a case of microcephallis. So todays articles seem like old news, AND they're confusing everyone by not mentioning the other bone sets recovered on site. What I haven't seen anyone address is whether they could have been premordial dwarfs... but considering how few of those there are in the world, the likelyhood of several being found in the save small island seems rare, but not unpossible. ~Mentions multiple skeletons... http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/10 27_041027_homo_floresiensis.html
and the video description
http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/channel/blog/20 05/03/explorer_hobbit.html
According to this news article from the BBC, it does appear to be a new species. This was posted yesterday and the study compares modern microencephalics skulls with the skulls found on Flores.
dude . . . UNDERLORDS!
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
Ok, they knew as soon as they saw this subterranean chamber that it was a hobbit hole, because it wasn't a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat.
QED.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
Either way, I don't think we've heard the Ent of this discussion.
>"The idea is that basically, instead of species evolving slowly over time into new species, speciation can occur rapidly (on a geological time scale) and then the new species will remain relatively stable until the next quick burst of change."
That is a good summary. Your other comments are rather off the mark, particularly the idea that there is no advantage to a "half-fin half-leg" and so on. Given that you don't have a background in biology, that's understandable. A good explaination of the theory is here at the talk.origins newsgroup site. A less techinical one is here at the Wikipedia site.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Tom Cruise's evil twin? Or is it the other way around?