Hobbits (Homo floresiensis)
loom | December 3, 2004The tension continues to mount over the locking-up of the Homo floresiensis fossils, according to this new article in the Australian. (via Gene Expression)
loom | November 26, 2004Last month saw the bombshell report that a tiny species of hominid lived on an Indonesian island 18,000 years ago. Since then there has been a dribbling of follow-up news. Some American paleoanthropologists have expressed skepticism, pointing out that while bones from several small individuals have been found, only one skull has turned up. The skull was the most distinctive part of the skeleton, with a minuscule brain and other features that suggested it was not closely related to our own species. The skeptics suggest that these hominids were actually modern human pygmies, and that the skull…
loom | October 26, 2004
Get to know that little skull. Scientists are going to be talking about it for centuries.
As researchers report in tomorrow's issue of Nature, the skull--and along with other parts of a skeleton--turned up in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. Several different dating methods gave the same result: the fossil is about 18,000 years old. (Additional bones from the same cave date back to about 38,000 years.) If all you had was the 18,000 year figure and this picture to go on, you might assume that the skull belonged to a small human child. After all, there is plenty of evidence that Homo…