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New research sheds light on 'hobbit'

Contact: Michele Urie
UrieM@si.edu
202-633-2950
Smithsonian

New research sheds light on 'hobbit'

Smithsonian-led study published in Science

Quote:
An international team of researchers led by the Smithsonian Institution has completed a new study on Homo floresiensis, commonly referred to as the “hobbit,” a 3-foot-tall, 18,000-year-old hominin skeleton, discovered four years ago on the Indonesian island of Flores. This study offers one of the most striking confirmations of the original interpretation of the hobbit as an island remnant of one of the oldest human migrations to Asia. The research is being published in the Sept. 21 issue of Science.

The team turned its research focus to the most complete of the 12 skeletons discovered and specifically toward three little bones from the hobbit’s left wrist. The research asserts that modern humans and our closest fossil relatives, the Neandertals, have a very differently shaped wrist in comparison to living great apes, older fossil hominins like Australopithecus (e.g., “Lucy”) and even the earliest members of the genus Homo (e.g., Homo habilis, the “handy-man”). But the hobbit’s wrist is basically indistinguishable from an African ape or early hominin-like wrist—nothing at all like that seen in modern humans and Neandertals.


http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-09/s-nrs092007.php
Andre

Thanks Maggie,

Been to a presentation about that the other year. There is even a local myth about that, told the speaker. The little people from the mountain coming to the villages and steal food. The villagers thought they were cute and were tolerant about that. Then one day, I forgot what exactly, but the villagers lost their tolerance and went after the little people, massacring them.

Anyway, yes island forms are pretty interesting. Can have weird adaptions, both larger and smaller than normal is possible. John de Vos, the curator of the Natural History Museum Naturalis in Leiden did his PhD about that.

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