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May 19, 2006
The Hobbit is Back in the News
I'm a little late by blogoshere standards but LB1, sometimes called the Hobbit, sometimes called Homo floresiensis and sometimes called something else, is back in the news. Science has two articles (I link to the abstracts) on the ongoing controversy concerning the cranium and other remains that were found in a cave on Flores Island in Indonesia. Did the cranium belong to an individual of a previously unknown species that had undergone island dwarfism? Or. Was it the cranium of a microcephalic modern human? Or. Was it a microcephalic dwarf?
Robert Martin and team write in support of the microcephalic modern human hypothesis while Dean Falk and team respond in defense of their view that microcephaly can't explain everything seen in the endocast of LBA.
This argument will continue until another cranium of a similar individual associated with other bones from the same archaeological context.
There have been several more timely and insightful posts on the subject. Please give them a read.
Posted by Duane Smith at May 19, 2006 3:02 PM | Read more on Paleoanthropology |
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