[publius911]

Are these scientist so clueless as to dismiss the random appearance of occasional freaks among the normal contemporary "human" population?

I am not an anthropologist, but common sense tells me that a single skull cannot define a "new species."

I will invoke the Mark Twain "Rule" :

Such large returns of conjecture, from such modest invesment in fact...

[TigersEye]

The odds against finding one skeleton that is 3 million years old are extremely high. The odds of finding a skeleton of a freak in the population would be astronomically higher than that.

[zeestephen]

Re: “Such large returns of conjecture, from such modest investment in fact...”

Excellent quote, but possibly inappropriate for this post.

Partial skeletons of 15 individuals were found.

Apparently, it's the largest group of pre-homo sapiens ever found in one place.

[gleeaikin]

When you read the whole article you discover that there were multiple bones and skulls of a total of 15 individuals. They were in South Africa, nowhere near the “Hobbits”. THe weirdness is the combination of very primitave traits and rather modern traits. Below is a fascinating story of how the discoverer hired 6 small, thin, female anthropologists to crawl through the very small passage and extract all these bones.

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/09/homo-naledi-rising-star-cave-hominin/404362/

[Red Badger]

15 individuals skeletons...............