News about Homo floresiensis

[trehinp]

Received today in my news watch program:

"Hobbit" Foot Like No Other In Human Fossil Record
Source: Stony Brook University Medical    Center           06-May-2009
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Description
An international team of paleoanthropologists, anatomists and archeologists, led by William L. Jungers, Ph.D., of Stony Brook University,have published the first scientific analysis of the foot of Homo floresiensis, the fossil found in Indonesia in 2003 and popularly referred to as the “Hobbit.” Their findings are reported in the May 7 issue of Nature.

Just in case some of you are interested in this subject.

Paul

[Don]

Paul, thank you so much. I am very interested in this topic.

I really appreciated the high quality photographs.

Don

[lagarvelho]

Don:

I must say this is interesting.  At the moment, I'mkind of "agnostic" about the whole thing,and I wish someone would turn up more specimens.  Then I'd have a better ideaofwhat was going on, so to speak.
Anne G

[Don]

I agree, we need more specimens. However the evidence has been gradually mounting against the microcephalic camp and for a genuine new (or old!) species.

Did you see the article about the wrist below, particularly the transition between chimpanzees/hobbit/H. sapiens? I found it pretty convincing, or at least consistent with the proposal that the hobbit was not just a microcephalic modern human. Click on the "more details" link, below the image on the linked page.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7004525.stm