NationStates Jolt Archive

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=21084

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Boffins find prehistoric dwarf skeleton
14:03 AEST Thu Oct 28 2004


AP - In an astonishing discovery that could rewrite the history of human evolution, scientists say they have found the skeleton of a new human species, a dwarf, marooned for eons in a tropical Lost World while modern man rapidly colonised the rest of the planet.

The finding on a remote Indonesian island has stunned anthropologists like no other in recent memory. It is a fundamentally new creature that bears more of a resemblance to fictional, barefooted hobbits than modern humans.

Yet biologically speaking, it may have been closely related to us and perhaps even shared its caves with our ancestors.

The 3-foot-tall adult female skeleton found in a cave is believed 18,000 years old. It smashes the long-cherished scientific belief that our species, Homo sapiens, systematically crowded out other upright-walking human cousins beginning 160,000 years ago and that we've had Earth to ourselves for tens of thousands of years.

Instead, it suggests recent evolution was more complex than previously thought.

And it demonstrates that Africa, the acknowledged cradle of humanity, does not hold all the answers to persistent questions of how - and where - we came to be.




"This finding really does rewrite our knowledge of human evolution," said Chris Stringer, who directs human origins studies at the Natural History Museum in London. "And to have them present less than 20,000 years ago is frankly astonishing."

Scientists called the dwarf skeleton "the most extreme" figure to be included in the extended human family. Certainly, she is the shortest.

She is the best example of a trove of fragmented bones that account for as many as seven of these primitive individuals that lived on the equatorial island of Flores, located east of Java and northwest of Australia. The mostly intact female skeleton was found in September 2003.

Scientists have named the extinct species Homo floresiensis, or Flores Man, and details appear in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

The specimens' ages range from 95,000 to 12,000 years old, meaning they lived until the threshold of recorded human history and perhaps crossed paths with the ancestors of today's islanders.

Flores Man was hardly formidable. His grapefruit-sized brain was two-thirds smaller than ours, and closer to the brains of today's chimpanzees and transitional prehuman species in Africa than vanished 2 million years ago.

Yet Flores Man made stone tools, lit fires and organised group hunts for meat. Bones of fish, birds and rodents found near the skeleton were charred, suggesting they were cooked.

All this suggests Flores Man lived communally and communicated effectively, perhaps even verbally.

"It is arguably the most significant discovery concerning our own genus in my lifetime," said anthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University, who reviewed the research independently.



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check out nature's stuff on it:

http://www.nature.com/news/specials/flores/index.html

We know hobbits, and other subspecies of humans, have been discovered already.

Theres this place called Tasmania see...

:D j/k (for any tasmanians who are offended)

But...what did it have in it's pocketses, precious? ;)


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6346939/?GT1=5472

And there is an article in "NATURE".

http://www.nature.com/news/specials/flores/index.html

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=21084

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Boffins find prehistoric dwarf skeleton
14:03 AEST Thu Oct 28 2004


AP - In an astonishing discovery that could rewrite the history of human evolution, scientists say they have found the skeleton of a new human species, a dwarf, marooned for eons in a tropical Lost World while modern man rapidly colonised the rest of the planet.

The finding on a remote Indonesian island has stunned anthropologists like no other in recent memory. It is a fundamentally new creature that bears more of a resemblance to fictional, barefooted hobbits than modern humans.

Yet biologically speaking, it may have been closely related to us and perhaps even shared its caves with our ancestors.

The 3-foot-tall adult female skeleton found in a cave is believed 18,000 years old. It smashes the long-cherished scientific belief that our species, Homo sapiens, systematically crowded out other upright-walking human cousins beginning 160,000 years ago and that we've had Earth to ourselves for tens of thousands of years.

Instead, it suggests recent evolution was more complex than previously thought.

And it demonstrates that Africa, the acknowledged cradle of humanity, does not hold all the answers to persistent questions of how - and where - we came to be.




"This finding really does rewrite our knowledge of human evolution," said Chris Stringer, who directs human origins studies at the Natural History Museum in London. "And to have them present less than 20,000 years ago is frankly astonishing."

Scientists called the dwarf skeleton "the most extreme" figure to be included in the extended human family. Certainly, she is the shortest.

She is the best example of a trove of fragmented bones that account for as many as seven of these primitive individuals that lived on the equatorial island of Flores, located east of Java and northwest of Australia. The mostly intact female skeleton was found in September 2003.

Scientists have named the extinct species Homo floresiensis, or Flores Man, and details appear in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

The specimens' ages range from 95,000 to 12,000 years old, meaning they lived until the threshold of recorded human history and perhaps crossed paths with the ancestors of today's islanders.

Flores Man was hardly formidable. His grapefruit-sized brain was two-thirds smaller than ours, and closer to the brains of today's chimpanzees and transitional prehuman species in Africa than vanished 2 million years ago.

Yet Flores Man made stone tools, lit fires and organised group hunts for meat. Bones of fish, birds and rodents found near the skeleton were charred, suggesting they were cooked.

All this suggests Flores Man lived communally and communicated effectively, perhaps even verbally.

"It is arguably the most significant discovery concerning our own genus in my lifetime," said anthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University, who reviewed the research independently.



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You gotta be shitting me that this is real!?!

If this was just one some "Enquirer" news paper, I would consiser this a hoax. Nature has several articles on this, I am leaning towards believing it.

Now, if it had said these "new" creatures were found in Wales or West England..... :eek:

You gotta be shitting me that this is real!?!
A friend of mine reported on it for the BBC. I think it's for real - he's pretty good at spotting the hoaxes and bad science, and lets the listeners know.

Yeah, this is real. It made the BBC news, for Gawds sake!
So, unless it's a hoax by an established member of the scientific community, it's real.

They aren't ruling out possibility that they're still around, in small numbers, either. I think those bones were.... 18,000 years old, and the site looked as if it was in use 12,000 years ago, that's practically yesterday.
Although, it's fairly unlikely.

we already had two of these threads the other day, but thats ok.



By the way its not a question of whether the find is real or not, coz it would be kind of difficult to fake a miniature but fully formed creature very much like our own but slightly different. faking C14 decay is difficult to say the least, and a tiny perfectly formed humanoid head? The only place I can think is from a dwarf (PC?), but they can be very different shapes, so...

Those dirty Hobbits have the ring and the fat one keeps lieing about me, we must have precious! Oh wait, their dead! HAHAHAHAHAHA, now precious is all mine.

I wonder if this gonna turn out like the Piltdown Man Incidient....

On the other hand, what if it isn't a human...but actually a real Dwarf?!

OMG Norse Mythology must be right then!....

On another note have they discovered how old it is?... when she died i mean.

I mean if it's like a 8 year old girl or something, well obviously she's going to be a little short.

... Oh yeah, 1 more note...i have decided to call her Suzy for no apparent reason.

we already had two of these threads the other day, but thats ok.
Sorry, I normally do check first, but it was late and I was tired...:p

I wonder if this gonna turn out like the Piltdown Man Incidient....

its already different because the fossils have been made available for examination and the articles have gone through peer-review. now, if this was some guy claiming to have found fossils of tiny humans, but he kept them locked up and didn't allow scientists to examine them, then we might have reason to be suspicious.

It stated that she was approximately 30 years of age.

As to Dwarves - there have been Dwarves in every nation. We just call them midgets now. The Old Norse Dwarves would have a hard time getting down to Indonesia - and probably wouldn't like the temp. :D

It was front page of The Inderpendent this morning.

There are the bushmen (no USA elections jokes please) in Africa, so why wouldn't there be in other parts of the world?

There are the bushmen (no USA elections jokes please) in Africa, so why wouldn't there be in other parts of the world?The folks in these articles make the bushmen (and pygmies) look like giants by comparison. I think the 30 year old woman was about 3 feet tall - which is a little less than 1 meter.

Real or not, it made the canadian papers, both english and french.

There are so many myths and legends from race memories about little people, it just has to be true.

I wonder if this gonna turn out like the Piltdown Man Incidient....

On the other hand, what if it isn't a human...but actually a real Dwarf?!

OMG Norse Mythology must be right then!....

On another note have they discovered how old it is?... when she died i mean.

I mean if it's like a 8 year old girl or something, well obviously she's going to be a little short.

... Oh yeah, 1 more note...i have decided to call her Suzy for no apparent reason.

Without having read anything about the subject, after just seeing it appear on the belgian news:
If you are going to say that they were tiny on the news for the entire world, you will have evidence that it was not a child (I suppose they can see wether the bones and teeth were no longer growing when she died).

Without having read anything about the subject, after just seeing it appear on the belgian news:
If you are going to say that they were tiny on the news for the entire world, you will have evidence that it was not a child (I suppose they can see wether the bones and teeth were no longer growing when she died).

There are links in this thread to about 3 or 4 articles about this, providing the evidence you talk about.

So how are these newly discovered "hobbits" different, say, to african pygmy tribes?

Is it a seperate species from homo-sapiens or homo-erectus?

I remember reading in an article on some news site a day or two ago that it's actually rather common when certain species are left in isolation in a resource-poor environment with few or no predators, that they grow smaller with evolution. I believe on the same island they found dwarf elephant skeletons.

There are so many myths and legends from race memories about little people, it just has to be true.


While I think the find is real (it was on the New Scientist site, and many other reputable places), this is fuzzy logic. We know how easy it is for false stuff to get spread around (duck's quacks echo, for instance. Check out snopes for LOADS of examples).