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October 10, 2006
Homo floresiensis Update
Carl Zimmer at the Loom has a very good discussion of the waxing and waning of opinion in the Paleoanthropology community with regard to Homo floresiensis, the small hominid from the island of Flores in Indonesia. I say Homo floresiensis, but the fossils found in the Liang Bua cave on the island may not represent a new species at all. Carl sums up the current situation well,
As we come up on the second anniversary of the initial announcement of Homo floresiensis, we're in a strange spot. Microcephaly turns out to be a very peculiar condition that makes it very hard to distinguish humans from a possible species of very small hominids. Many different genes can give rise to the same conditions, producing different shapes to the brain, as well as different changes to other parts of the body. Scientists actually have a lot to learn about microcephaly--for one thing, many studies rely on remains in museum collections, which almost never included anything below the skull. At this point it's not even clear if discovering more tiny hominids on Flores would make the case for a separate species. Under some conditions, it might be possible that a small population of islanders had a high proportion of microcephaly-triggering genes floating about. But that may be moot if nobody's actually digging in the Liang Bua cave.Now, if Homo floresiensis is the result of evolutionary dwarfing, then perhaps the debate might be advanced a bit if someone could find hominid fossils on other islands around southeast Asia that have also followed the Homo floresiensis path. On the other hand, if Homo floresiensis descended from ancient small hominids, those hominids would have to have come to Flores from Africa, where the oldest hominids are found. That's a long path, with plenty of opportunities for fossils to be formed along the way. Whether anyone finds them is another question. Finally, there have been rumors of DNA from Liang Bua, but no published reports. So there's another avenue of hope. I have no idea when I will be writing the next Homo floresiensis post, but I can only hope it continues to be interesting. [Emphasis added]
Read all of Carl's instructive post. Of particular interest is his overview of the just published Martin et al, "Flores hominid: New species or microcephalic dwarf?" As usual, Carl's has the best stuff going on this and many other subjects.
Posted by Duane Smith at October 10, 2006 9:21 AM | Read more on Paleoanthropology |
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