Homo floresiensis

[Inti]

I'm just wondering how you all explain away Homo floresiensis.

=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4331252.stm]

More Flores 'Hobbits' described

Unlike modern humans, H. floresiensis has little in the way of a chin

Scientists have discovered more remains of the strange, small people that once lived on Flores island, Indonesia.

The announcement last year detailing a single, partial skeleton caused a sensation when it was claimed to be a human species new to science.

Homo floresiensis, as it was called, was little more than a metre tall and lived 18,000 years ago.

Now, the same team tells Nature journal it has skeletal remains from at least nine of the "Hobbit-like" individuals.

The new discoveries include missing parts of the old skeleton - designated LB1 after the caved dig site at Liang Bua - and a collection of other bones, such as jaw and cranial fragments, a vertebra, arm and leg bones, toes and fingers.

The team, led by Michael Morwood from University of New England, Armidale, Australia, says the specimens have helped build a more rounded picture of LB1, with additional evidence of the little people's hunting and fire-making abilities.

The researchers say they are now more convinced than ever that Homo floresiensis represents a distinct human species and not some diseased individual as some sceptics have suggested.

"The finds further demonstrate that LB1 is not just an aberrant or pathological individual but is representative of a long-term population," they write in Nature.

A critical line in their argument is the length of time which the new collection of remains represents - possibly 80,000 years - making a disease explanation for the cause of the little people's stature and shape an unlikely one.

More remains are being sought in Liang Bua cave (Image: Chris Turney)

The team contend that Homo floresiensis, with its 380-cubic-cm-sized brain is the outcome of a phenomenon known as endemic or island dwarfing.

This sees isolated species, released from the pressures of predation but constrained by limited resources, evolving either smaller or larger forms than would otherwise be the case.

In the case of H. floresiensis, it is said the creature could have come out of Homo erectus, a long-extinct early-human species that was known to populate Flores about 800,000 years ago.

Reconstruction: The Hobbit was only 1m tall and possessed "primitive" features

Daniel Lieberman, of Harvard University in Massachusetts, US, said further discoveries on the island would help settle the issue.

"If the island-dwarfing hypothesis is correct, then the island's earliest inhabitants should be larger than the Liang Bua fossils; and if dwarfing occurred gradually, then it might even be possible to find fossils intermediate in size and shape between H. floresiensis and its ancestor," he wrote in a commentary in Nature.

"More evidence on when Homo sapiens (our species) first arrived on Flores is also needed."

[M45510G1C]

Why do we need to explain it away?

[Guest mc 4 JC]

I'm not so sure there needs to be much explained. They have not run any DNA analysis, as they can do with the T-rex through use of bone marrow. Until they prove that genetically this thing is a "cousin" of homo sapiens, or better yet, until there is an identical genetic match = greater than that of an oversized chimp, (and especially because this fossil is only ~18,000 years old, which is quite comparitively young for most dating from paleontologists) they will have provided no evidence of speciation through differentiation, as would have been the seemingly sole cause for this group of mammals to have 'evolved'. Understand that I see your reasoning for as why to believe that this points to a claim such as humans have evolved from this species in only 18,000 years (which by the way in genetics alone is statistically highly unlikely in that short amount of time, considering the chin is not the only thing that is different there), or that more likely, this species 'evolved' from another prior to 18,000 years ago. It is most likely this is some form of well adapted primate or perhaps dwarfed people. Until the genetic identity is provided most of these claims cannot be bolstered, for the lack of evidence to show this species is not identical to ours and was not simply caused by a mutation in the human growth hormone receptor gene cannot be convincing otherwise. Lack of evidence does NOT mean there is none, thus making a case. Good scientists work all scientific avenues available to affirm the truth, to reaffirm the positives results and to reaffirm that the negatives are infact negative results.

With all that said, if you are still unconvinced of alternatives, you may quite enjoy reading, "Buried Alive" by Jack Cuozzo. This man is a serious researcher of skeletal structures and more specifically, a researcher of the (unfortunately often poor) job done by others to recreate the jaws and bites of these fossils.

By the way, never take the "expert's" word for their work, if you truly want to know the truth, become well studied on the topic of what you are researching first, then look at all the evidence they found and make your own assertions from their 'proof' for their claims. Researchers can and will make mistakes!

Hope you enjoy the book - find it on amazon.com --> here and his sequal. Enjoy!

I'm just wondering how you all explain away Homo floresiensis.

Edited October 11, 2005 by mc 4 JC

[Gerioke]

Check this out.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,...1581392,00.html

Captured on film: wild gorilla using a walking stick

David Adam, environment correspondent

Friday September 30, 2005

The Guardian

It is an unnerving sensation that anyone who has waded into unfamiliar water will know well: the ground is slippy and uneven and before you know it you can be in up to your waist. So when Leah the gorilla found herself in difficulty attempting to cross a swampy pool left by elephants in northern Congo, she grabbed a branch and used it as a walking stick. In doing so, she became the first wild gorilla seen using any kind of tool in decades of wildlife research.

Thomas Breuer of the Wildlife Conservation Society, who captured the incident on film and publishes the first pictures today in the journal Public Library of Science Biology, said: "This is a truly astounding discovery. Tool use in wild apes provides us with valuable insights into the evolution of our own species."

The scientists were watching a group of wild western gorillas last October from an observation platform near a forest clearing in the Nouabale-Ndoki national park. After staring intently at the pool from the water's edge Leah took a few tentative steps. The water quickly became waist deep so she grabbed the branch and used it to prod the water, as if testing its depth. She then moved further into the pool, leaned on the branch and used it as a walking stick.

All great apes use tools in captivity, but only chimpanzees and orang-utans had been seen with them in the wild. Biologists had suggested gorillas did not need to because they are strong enough to get food by force. While chimps use hammers to crack nuts and sticks to dig out termites, gorillas break nuts with their teeth and smash termite mounds with their fists. The scientists also saw a second gorilla using a branch as a tool, this time laying it over swampy ground as a bridge and walking across.

darn dirty ape!

[yomotalking]

Oh yes.

Apes may have intelligence like ours, and may be as good as ours. But there's a huge difference.

WE have have souls.

They don't.

[apothanein kerdos]

I need to explain away the existance of short people?

[ayin jade]

The average height of a Bushman in the Kalahari (as well as a pygmy in central Africa) is 4 feet 9 inches. The average height of a Maasai, another African tribe, is 6 feet 6 inches. They are not separate species. I am a female with large heavy pronounced bones, which would be taken as masculine bone structure (except for the one obvious skeletal difference). I have seen many many men with more gracile delicate bone structures. Without the defining pelvic bones, my skeleton would be considered the male and the delicate men I have met would be considered the female. There are many mistakes anthropologists make when all they have to work with are a few fragments of bones. (I took a class on human osteology and have a degree in anthropology. You would be amazed at some of the things I saw. Politics and pride play a large role in the pronouncements following research.)

[apothanein kerdos]

Also just want to add, if it was a little over a metre tall, that would put them between 3 and 4 feet tall...and I'm suppose to deny the existance of it?

[ayin jade]

They are not basing this on a complete skeleton, but on isolated bones. I would be curious to know which bones they have. Chances are not much.

[irishcowboy]

Check this out.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,...1581392,00.html

Captured on film: wild gorilla using a walking stick

David Adam, environment correspondent

Friday September 30, 2005

The Guardian

It is an unnerving sensation that anyone who has waded into unfamiliar water will know well: the ground is slippy and uneven and before you know it you can be in up to your waist. So when Leah the gorilla found herself in difficulty attempting to cross a swampy pool left by elephants in northern Congo, she grabbed a branch and used it as a walking stick. In doing so, she became the first wild gorilla seen using any kind of tool in decades of wildlife research.

Thomas Breuer of the Wildlife Conservation Society, who captured the incident on film and publishes the first pictures today in the journal Public Library of Science Biology, said: "This is a truly astounding discovery. Tool use in wild apes provides us with valuable insights into the evolution of our own species."

The scientists were watching a group of wild western gorillas last October from an observation platform near a forest clearing in the Nouabale-Ndoki national park. After staring intently at the pool from the water's edge Leah took a few tentative steps. The water quickly became waist deep so she grabbed the branch and used it to prod the water, as if testing its depth. She then moved further into the pool, leaned on the branch and used it as a walking stick.

All great apes use tools in captivity, but only chimpanzees and orang-utans had been seen with them in the wild. Biologists had suggested gorillas did not need to because they are strong enough to get food by force. While chimps use hammers to crack nuts and sticks to dig out termites, gorillas break nuts with their teeth and smash termite mounds with their fists. The scientists also saw a second gorilla using a branch as a tool, this time laying it over swampy ground as a bridge and walking across.

darn dirty ape!

thats cool.....

personally, if we are to believe in evolution, I think we came from dogs...... they are more friendly towards humans, they also use tools, ( they even know how to wrap a blanket around them ) they fluff their pillows before they lay on them, they like to eat from the table..... they even like going to the bath room in the house rather then outside.... my vote is dogs ........

when man gets in trouble, they go to the "dog house" not a gorrilla or ape house.....

when man gets upset, they say "doggone".....

we would prefer to life a dogs life...

dogs can walk on their hind feet and even dance.....

dogs can even communicate with humans.....

so my vote is for dogs...