No one picked up on the the Hobbit story that Bill Yates mentioned
recently on this list.
The following abstract from today's /San Francisco Chronicle /indicates
something of the intensity with which research in this field is conducted.
Jack Haas
San Francisco Chronicle <http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/>
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Hopping mad over 'hobbit'
Scientists fight over fossil skull and bones of humanlike creature
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor <mailto:dperlman@sfchronicle.com>
Friday, March 4, 2005
Take a single fossil skull the size of a chimpanzee that might have held
a highly advanced human brain, a trove of ancient humanlike bones and
teeth, and an odd assortment of stone tools from an unknown age, and you
add a major new mystery to the endless puzzle of human evolution.
Now add a dose of intrigue to the mystery, as a team of angry
anthropologists charges one of their colleagues with outrageously
unethical behavior, including destroying evidence that might have helped
to solve the arcane puzzle.
All this surfaced Thursday, furthering the astonishment of scientists
around the world that began in October when the anthropologists first
reported they had discovered the remains of a bizarre creature barely 3
feet tall that seemed part modern human and part ancient ancestor -- a
creature they affectionately named "hobbit."
The scientists claimed that the fossil skull and bones -- and the stone
tools found with them deep in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores
-- represented an entirely new species of tiny human. Homo floresiensis,
as they formally named their find, emerged in the evolutionary lineage
on that island some 95,000 years ago and went extinct there some 12,000
years ago, the scientists said.
On Thursday, an anthropologist who specializes in the human brain, Dean
Falk of Florida State University, announced in the online journal
Science Express that she and her colleagues at Washington University in
St. Louis have created a "virtual endocast" of the hobbit's brain,
showing structures that establish that the creature could think, make
plans and initiate useful behavior......
View the remainder of the article at:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/03/04/MNGHFBKCLN1.DTL
Received on Fri Mar 4 07:25:30 2005
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