[asa] Taking Sides In Battle Of The 'Hobbit'

More on the Hobbit debate. ~ Janice

First - one comment:

"I love it when scientists argue. It generally means that there isn't
really enough evidence to provide an answer, so the grant money is
still up for grabs. The guessing will continue until a plurality of
the community has written a paper supporting one position and have
their professional reputations pegged to it. Then that position will
become the accepted truth, and all further research to the contrary
will be crushed with
belittlement." ~
<http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1716531/posts?page=5#5>5

Taking Sides In Battle Of The 'Hobbit'
New Scientist ^ | 10-9-2006 | Jeff Hecht
Posted on 10/09/2006 8:07:07 PM EDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1716531/posts

The battle among paleaoanthropologists over Homo Floresiensis,
popularly known as "the hobbit", threatens to become an epic of Lord
of the Rings proportions.

The debate rages on over whether the fossil, found on the Indonesian
island of Flores, is a separate species or simply a modern human with
stunted development.

Now Robert Martin at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago,
US, claims the controversial fossil,
<http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6588.html>discovered in 2004
was really a Stone Age Homo sapiens (modern human) with a mild form
of the condition microcephaly. There are more than 400 genetic
variants of this disease, which stunts brain development.

The existence of a species of small-brained dwarf humans just 18,000
years ago on Flores is a mere fantasy, Martin says. He argues that
stone tools found at the site were made by normal Homo sapiens, not a
separate species of hominids with 400-cubic-centimetre brains.

Evolving dwarfism

Yet just weeks earlier, Colin Groves at the Australian National
University in Canberra, published a study in the Journal of Human
Evolution (vol 51, p 360), which stated that the Flores skull does
not have the shape of a microcephaliac.

Groves concluded the fossil was a separate species which had evolved
on Flores from an unknown earlier hominid, perhaps an
australopithecine, and gradually took on a dwarf form on the island.

"There's no sign of anything but Homo floresiensis on Flores at the
end of the Pleistocene," he told New Scientist. The Pleistocene epoch
ended about 12,000 years ago.

Second skull

In another study, Dean Falk at Florida State University, US, found
that the skull lacks pathological features that separate 10 modern
microcepheliacs from normal Homo sapiens. "The brain is a combination
of features I've never seen in any other primate," she says.

Additional studies of the fossil are unlikely to bridge the chasm.
Sceptics have sided with Martin, convinced that a hominid with a
chimp-sized brain lacked the intelligence to live a Stone Age human
lifestyle. Believers, however, think the metre-tall fossil and the
fragmentary remains of seven other individuals reveal a hitherto
unexpected branch of the human tree.

Resolving the argument will require new material, says Chris Stringer
at the Natural History Museum in London, UK. "We need a second skull
to see what the variation is." Only then will we know if the hobbit
was one of a kind, or a typical resident of Stone Age Flores.

Journal reference: Anatomical Record (DOI:
10.1002/ar.a.20394)
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10246-taking-sides-in-the-battle-of-the-hobbit.html

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Received on Mon Oct 9 21:15:48 2006