Sure, and I was wonderin' where they'd gotten to.
Posted on 10/13/2005 8:12:50 AM PDT by Crackingham
In their study of the evolutionary ladder, scientists have found that modern humans rubbed elbows with some colorful cousins. But few have been as puzzling as a purported cousin unearthed on the Indonesian island of Flores. The partial skeleton, first reported last October, was stunning. Estimated to stand just over three feet tall, it offered the tantalizing possibility that a new species of mini-human lived 18,000 years ago. But some researchers dismissed the find as a pygmy or the result of a physical defect.
Now the research team that gave the world the hobbit-like Homo floresiensis has found what it sees as confirmation that the species did, in fact, exist. It reports that it has unearthed additional fossils at the site, representing at least nine similar individuals. They range in age from 12,000 years ago to perhaps 95,000 years old. If the team's conclusions hold up, the fossils throw into question key theories about the human family tree.
The fossils "are not only astonishing, but also exciting because of the questions they raise," according to Daniel Lieberman, a biological anthropologist at Harvard University.
Among the questions: Who were their ancestors? How did the diminutive creatures reach the island? And how did they survive so long after modern humans appeared in the Indonesian archipelago?
At the very least, the finds dramatically underscore how much anthropologists still have to learn about the diversity of species gathered under the umbrella designation of hominids, which gave rise to modern humans, researchers say.
The mineralized remains from the site at Liang Bua include arm and thigh bones, shoulder blades, fingers, toes, and jaws. The results appear in today's edition of the journal Nature.
These additional puzzle pieces suggest that H. floresiensis not only was short but built much like long-extinct primates called australopithecines, according to the Australian and Indonesian research team, led by Michael Morwood and Peter Brown at Australia's University of New England. Australopithecines lived in eastern Africa from 1 million to 4 million years ago.
Just as confounding, stone chips, anvils, and tools indicated that these Ice Age Lilliputians had mastered stone toolmaking, as well as the use of fire. And they had a penchant for hunting pygmy elephants and Komodo dragons for dinner. All these are feats that scientists usually attribute to hominids with far bigger brains and greater cognitive abilities.
"I really have to start rethinking the amount of variation you can have" and still wind up with a toolmaking hominid like H. floresiensis, says Dean Falk, a paleoanthropologist at Florida State University. This species had a brain smaller than a Florida grapefruit, she adds, yet it was capable of complex behaviors.
Given its oddities, H. floresiensis threatens to throw cold water on some long-held ideas about human cognitive evolution. It also suggests that modern humans coexisted with relatives who became evolutionary dead ends more recently than previously believed.
"mini-me"
They range in age from 12,000 years ago to perhaps 95,000 years old.
Impossible! The fundies keep telling me the earth is only 6,000 years old.
Impossible! The fundies keep telling me the earth is only 6,000 years old.
It is only 6,000 years old. It's the time-dating method that is messed up. BTW, NO ONE likes to be called a "fundy." State your point without throwing around labels. It's sooooo Liberal-like.
Still do, we coexist with Muslims today...
Pretty much all of us were 3 feet tall at one point...it was quite a few years ago for me, but not as long ago as 95,000 years.
Sorry, the Carbon-14 dating method, as well as several others, work just fine. Particularly useful in that time period (i.e., the last 10,000 years) is tree-ring dating. You can match individuals rings on trees of overlapping ages, and can actually count back over 11,600 years. There is no evidence of a flood in the tree rings.
The tree rings are then used to calibrate the Carbon-14 curve.
The overall conclusion from archaeology, sedimentology, geology, and several other studies is that there is no flood and the earth is far older than 6,000 years.
Paging Mr. Frodo. We've found your ring.
200 years ago hardly anyone was over 5 feet tall. At least not the Brits and French who first came here. If you go tour all these old forts which are now museums you see that there beds were only 5 feet long, things were made for much shorter people.
Ha! very good!
You know, fighting the brave battle against a trivial, minuscule number of nutcases must give you great pleasure, but is no great achievement.
I am a Christian and dismiss this group as abnormal and irrelevant. What is your obsession with them?
Could I perhaps help you find a group of truly retarded humans among which you can feel even more intellectually superior?
There is plenty of evidence of a flood but you reject that evidence just like many reject the "evidence" of we descended from apes. And don't bother asking for the evidence - there is no point and you and I both know it.
You will no doubt bless us with a citation.
Total and complete nonsense. The rate of decay has been found to be rock steady. And the decay has nothing to do with helium atoms; your complete ignorance of physics leads you to confuse carbon-14 decay (which emits beta particles) with uranium decay (which emits alpha particles, or helium nuclei).
Pretty stupid stuff from a guy who's publicly said he agrees with Michael Moore that Americans are the dumbest people on earth. Maybe you should complete high-school before you attack the intelligence of Americans.
Sure, and I was wonderin' where they'd gotten to.
Were you going to provide him with a link to DU?
Nathan, you keep bring up objections to tree-ring dating which simply do not hold up. Likewise for your changes in the "constant." The only people who seem to believe the way you do are young earth types; scientists are pretty firmly behind these dating methods.
mlc, you say there is evidence of a flood. In my research in archaeological sites in the western US there should be evidence of a flood in particular soil layers between 3,000 and 5,000 years of age. Instead we find continuous human occupation across that time period in many sites. We are dealing with soils, not geological layers; soils are severely disrupted by water movement, and any such movement could be readily seen in the stratigraphy.
In both cases, you and Nathan see what you want to believe in spite of the many scientists who have produced evidence to the contrary. That's fine, believe what you want.
But don't try to convince scientists, who deal directly with the evidence, the tenets of your faith-based beliefs.
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