Posted on 05/06/2009 11:40:30 AM PDT by WL-law
Diminutive humans whose remains were found on the remote Indonesian island of Flores in 2003 truly are a new species, and not pygmies whose brains had shrivelled with disease, researchers reported Wednesday.
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Many scientists have said H. floresiensis were prehistoric humans descended from homo erectus, stunted by natural selection over millennia through a process called insular dwarfing.
Others countered that even this evolutionary shrinking, well known in island-bound animals, could not account for the hobbit's chimp-sized grey matter of barely more than 400 cubic centimetres, a third the size of a modern human brain.
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A team led by William Jungers of the Stony Brook University in New York tackled the problem from the other end by analysing the hobbit's foot.
In some ways it is very human. The big toe is aligned with the others and the joints make it possible to extend the toes as the body's full weight falls on the foot, attributes not found in great apes.
But, in other respects, it is startlingly primitive: far longer than its modern human equivalent, and equipped with a very small big toe, long, curved lateral toes, and a weight-bearing structure closer to a chimpanzee's.
Recent archeological evidence from Kenya shows that the modern foot evolved more than 1.5 million years ago, most likely in Homo erectus.
So unless the Flores hobbits became more primitive over time -- a more-than-unlikely scenario -- they must have branched off the human line at an even earlier date.
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Only more fossil evidence will tell us whether the hobbits of Flores evolved from Homo erectus, whose traces have been found throughout Eurasia, or from an even more ancient lineage whose footsteps have not yet been traced outside Africa, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
“Chimp-sized grey matter...” So there were democrats way back then?
Fossils of “Java Man” were first found on that Southeast Asian island 112 years ago. Although their origin was not recognized at the time, the finds represented Homo erectus, an early human species that presumably evolved in equatorial Africa more than 2 million years ago. But the how, why, and when of Homo erectus’ trek from Africa to island Southeast Asia have always been difficult questions."
How a gibbon skull cap became united with a human bone is less difficult to answer, it’s called fantasy.
Who woulda thunk it was a recliner? ;^)
Bilbo lives?
Look Lizavetta,
This is a troll you show.
NOt a Hobbit. It should be so obvious.
Annie,
Don’t know if ya’ve ever watched two and a half men?
They have a round door.
I’ve sat and thought of how I could make mine similar.
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Thanks blam. We've had one about this, but hey, I like the "hobbits". It remains to be determined whether this one was a Harfoot, Stoor, or Fallohyde. |
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Will Obama ever release photos of his feet???
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