More research suggests that the "little people," the one-meter tall humans whose bones were discovered on the island of Flores, Indonesia in 2004, were a distinct species and not modern humans with a medical disorder. According to Smithsonian Institution anthropologist Matthew Tocheri and his colleagues, the little people's wrist bones are much more like those of an ape than a human. Their findings, published today in the journal Science, argue that this "hobbit" species split off at least 800,000 years ago from the evolutionary branch that led to humans. From the New York Times:
Dr. Tocheri and his colleagues said that the distinct species emerged from ancestors “that migrated out of Africa before the evolution of the shared, derived wrist morphology that is characteristic of modern humans, Neanderthals and their last common ancestor.”
But Robert B. Eckhardt, a professor of developmental genetics at Pennsylvania State University and one of several critics of the new-species designation, took issue with the new research. He said the wrist study appeared “to be an exercise in the presentation of misleading ideas in an obfuscatory manner.”
Previously on BB:
• How Hobbits made tools Link
• Hobbit brain Link
• Fun on Flores Link
• Own your own Hobbit skull model Link
