The 'Hobbit' - New Species or Deformed Human

[Karstscience]

Authenticity of 'Hobbit' human discounted
May 19, 2006

Researcher sees genetic brain deformity instead
BY GUY GUGLIOTTA
Washington Post

More than 1½ years after discovering a race of ancient, "Hobbit"-like little people on a remote tropical island, scientists still do not know what to make of them. Are they a new species of human ancestor? Or were they modern humans suffering from a debilitating genetic deformity?

In dueling papers published today in the journal Science, researchers offer insights on both sides to explain how a 30-year-old female with a grapefruit-sized brain could have appeared 18,000 years ago on the Indonesian island of Flores.

A research team led by primatologist Robert Martin, provost of Chicago's Field Museum, argues that no human ancestor could reach a weight of 64 pounds with a brain size of only 23.2 cubic inches and be able to make sophisticated tools like those found with the Hobbit remains.

The Martin team said the Hobbit must have been a modern human with microcephaly — a condition, usually genetic, in which the brain fails to grow to normal size. "This brain is too small for any explanation besides pathology," Martin said in an interview.

In a rebuttal, a second team led by Florida State University paleoanthropologist Dean Falk defended their earlier research, contending the skull was nothing like that of a microcephalic and the remains most likely represent a previously unknown species.

While microcephalic brains shrink with age, causing the inside of the skull to smooth out, the Flores skull is highly convoluted, reflecting the imprint of a fully expanded, fully functioning brain, she said.

Several scientists said that neither of the papers would be the last word.

"This argument is going to run and run," said Ian Tattersall, an anthropology curator at the American Museum of Natural History and a bystander in the dispute. "This is an extraordinarily weird and unexpected thing, and even now nobody knows what to do with it."

A multinational team led by archaeologist Michael Morwood, of Australia's University of New England, unearthed the remains in a limestone cave on Flores, an island east of the Java Sea.

The team described the find as a new species of dwarf human ancestor that overlapped with modern humans and survived long after Neanderthals died out about 27,000 years ago. In late 2004, the team dubbed the fossil homo Florensiensis, but short stature and the presence of stone tool artifacts soon earned it the nickname Hobbit, after the small but clever villagers from J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings."

Martin and several colleagues disputed the find from the beginning, arguing that no creature with a brain as small as the Hobbit's could make finely wrought stone tools and hunt the animals whose remains were found in the cave.


www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/news/local/14614142.htm

[Brian Roebuck]

That is one strange yet amazingly cave related story! Good find Karstscience! Thanks for sharing. I wonder if they can do DNA analysis on the remains to see how "human" the "hobbits" were???

Very interesting.

[Karstscience]

Similar remains have been excavated from Liang Bu Cave since the first skull was found in 2003. I would think DNA analysis would have been performed by now, though I cannot recall published reports stating that has been done. The debate of new species vs. deformed human is still in its infancy. Unless conclusive evidence surfaces the debate will linger indefinitely.

[Karstscience]

Stone tools used to back 'Hobbit' theory
By Steve Connor,
01 June 2006

Scientists have produced further evidence to support the idea that a miniature species of human, nicknamed "the hobbit", lived on a remote Indonesian island until becoming extinct more than 10,000 years ago. The latest study suggests the one metre-high creatures could make fairly sophisticated stone tools despite having brains no bigger than grapefruits.

Specialists are divided over ancient bones found in a cave on the island of Flores which seem to suggest that another human species lived alongside Homo sapiens as recently as 12,000 years ago.

Skeletal remains of the creature - formally named Homo floresiensis - suggested that adults walked upright, were about 3ft tall and, unlike modern-day pygmies, had a small head in perfect proportion to the rest of the body.

The most important specimen recovered from the floor of the cave at Liang Bua in Flores was of a complete skull, although the bones of about eight other individuals have also been dug out and analysed.

The skull is so small that it can fit neatly into the palm of a hand. It has a cranial capacity of just 400 cubic centimetres - about two or three times smaller than the brain of modern humans. Sceptics have argued that a creature with such a small brain could not have possibly made the fine stone tools found at the same level in the cave sediments - and presumably buried at the same time that H. floresiensis had lived there.

Proponents of the hobbit concept have suggested that the creature used the tools to hunt and butcher the miniature elephants, giant komodo dragons and oversized rats, whose remains were also found alongside the human bones.

However, last month sceptics poured scorn on the idea, saying that the skull belonged to a person with microcephaly, a congenital disease resulting in exceptionally small skulls and stunted growth.

James Phillips, professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said that it was wrong to suggest that the stone tools could have been made by earlier species of humans, such as Homo erectus, a creature that evolved more than 1.8 million years ago and predated modern humans by many hundreds of thousands of years. "These tools are so advanced that there is no way they were made by anyone other than Homo sapiens," Professor Phillips said.

Now, however, another team of stone-tool experts has cast doubt on this judgement, saying that similar stone tools have been uncovered on the island that clearly predate the arrival of modern Homo sapiens.

Adam Brumm of the Australian National University in Canberra and his colleagues report in the journal Nature that they have found hundreds of almost identical stone tools at a site called Mata Menge just 30 miles away from the Liang Bua cave. They say the tools are between 700,000 and 840,000 years old - too old to have been made by Homo sapiens - and that the production techniques are practically identical to that used at Liang Bua 18,000 years ago. "The Mata Menga evidence negates claims that stone artefacts associated with H. floresiensis are so complex that they must have been made by modern humans," the scientists say. "Despite being separated by 30 miles and at least 700,000 years, there are remarkable similarities between the stone artefact assemblage from Mata Menge and that found with H. floresiensis at Liang Bua."

No human remains have yet been found at Mata Menge so it is not clear who made the stone tools found at the site, but the scientists point to the only known possibility - Homo erectus. They suggest H. floresiensis could therefore be a direct descendent of H. erectus and that the knowledge of how to make the stone tools was passed down the generations to descendants who had evolved into a miniature form. "Pronouncements that H. floresiensis lacked the brain size necessary to make stone artefacts are therefore based on preconceptions rather than evidence," the researchers say.

Bones of contention

PILTDOWN MAN: The skull and stone tools of an apparent ape-man were dug from gravel deposits in Piltdown, East Sussex between 1911 and 1915 and were soon declared the "missing link" between apes and humans. In 1953, a study showed that the artefacts were elaborate forgeries, a mixture of human and primate bones. One of biggest scientific discoveries in human origins was declared an embarrassing hoax.

TOUMAI MAN: French scientists discovered a six to seven million-year-old skull in northern Chad in 2002. Formally named Sahelanthropus tchadensis, the creature became the oldest known member of the human family. Other scientists later dismissed it as belonging to an extinct species of ape who did not habitually walk on two legs, a distinguishing characteristic of the human family. The journal Science, however, voted the discovery its Breakthrough of the Year.

DMANISI MAN: Scientists discovered several skulls of early humans dating to about 1.8 million years ago near Dmanisi in Georgia. The small-brained creatures belonged to a species called Homo erectus and reignited the debate over early human migrations. One theory is that Homo erectus died out and was replaced by Homo sapiens, another theory is that the two species interbred and modern humans evolved not solely in Africa but in several regions of the world.


news.independent.co.uk/

[L Roebuck]

Research confirms 'Hobbit' a new species
Tuesday, 18 July 2006

An independent study has corroborated the work of Professor Peter Brown, the University of New England scientist who analysed skeletal remains found on the Indonesian island of Flores and concluded that they represented a hitherto unknown human species.
Professor Brown, UNE's Professor Mike Morwood (the leader of the archaeological team that discovered the remains) and their Australian and Indonesian colleagues, in momentous publications in the international journal Nature in 2004, named the tiny human species Homo floresiensis (while the media quickly nicknamed it 'the Hobbit').

Professor Brown said today that the newly-published study by a team of scientists from the Australian National University and the University of Sydney had come as ‘a complete surprise - but a pleasant surprise.'

"The study - which uses a different approach to the analysis of our published data - is a good example of the process by which the scientific community verifies new findings," he said.

"There have been unsubstantiated suggestions that the remains could be those of a deformed - or very short - modern person.

"While such suggestions can be seen as part of that process of verification, the newly-published study is an important step towards the general acceptance of our conclusions."

The new paper, published in the most recent issue of the Journal of Human Evolution, is titled ‘Homo floresiensis: Microcephalic, pygmoid, Australopithecus, or Homo?'

The researchers used a sophisticated technique called ‘multivariate analysis' to compare skull measurements of Homo floresiensis with those of diseased (microcephalic) modern humans, other modern humans including African pygmies and Andaman Islanders, a ‘pygmoid' excavated from another cave on Flores, and the extinct human relatives Australopithecus and Paranthropus.

They concluded that, as the Homo floresiensis remains could not be identified with any known species, their original identification as representing a new human species was justified.

The paper supports the proposal of Professor Morwood and Professor Brown, published in Nature in 2004 and 2005, that Homo floresiensis, after emerging from Africa several million years ago, reached Indonesia and survived on Flores until 12,000 years ago.

"It's good that an Australian team has been the one to come up with this independent verification," Professor Brown said.

"There will be many more articles - by me and my colleagues, and by others - on this subject, but I'm sure the substance of the discovery will stand up."

Article: armidale.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?class=news&subclass=general&story_id=495242&category=General&m=7&y=2006

[Karstscience]

Published online: 25 August 2006

Will the hobbit argument ever be resolved?

Debate over tiny human's evolutionary status is set to rage on.
Michael Hopkin

For the past two years, researchers have been hotly debating (and coming dangerously close to fighting over) whether the fossils of a diminutive hominin found in Indonesia are those of a previously unknown species. The publication this week of some long-standing doubts over the 'hobbit' fossils show the debate is far from over.

The dispute over the bones of Homo floresiensis has involved allegations of name-calling, nationalistic motives, and wilfully damaging specimens. One camp insists that the tiny inhabitants of the Indonesian island of Flores were a unique species; the other claims that the bones are of a diseased Homo sapiens pygmy. As the debate rages, [e-mail] set out to find whether there will ever be an end to the conflict.

The latest instalment came on Monday, with the publication in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of doubts first raised by Indonesia's leading anthropologist, Teuku Jacob, of Gadjah Mada University, shortly after the finds were first published in 2004.

Jacob and his colleagues cite a range of evidence that the 'hobbit' bones bear similarities to features found in various modern pygmies, including a Rampasasa pygmy from Flores who has a receding chin (the single complete hobbit skull features a jaw with no chin at all).

Deformed by disease
The one complete hobbit skull found so far has additional 'deformities' not present in any modern Homo sapiens — but these, Jacob's team argues, have been caused by disease. In their paper, they divide the iconic photograph of the hobbit skull down the middle and create mirror images of the two halves. The two halves look distinctly different — evidence, the team argues, for developmental abnormality.

Peter Brown of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, one of the team members who unveiled the findings in Nature retorts that this type of analysis is very prone to bias. "Depending on the camera angle you can produce anything you want from mirror imaging," says Brown. Particularly for a fossil that has been buried and squashed for thousands of years.

Accusations are also flying on both sides of bad conduct. Jacob has been accused of acting out of nationalistic pride and frustration at not having been the one to discover the bones. Meanwhile, authors of the new critique argue that this accusation is motivated by bitterness. "We have been introducing some scientific ideas and there has been quite a bit of name-calling in return," says Jacob's colleague Robert Eckhardt of Pennsylvania State University in University Park.

Bone hunt
The bitter argument over different aspects of the bones' appearance begs the question of whether debates based on morphology will ever come to a definitive conclusion.

Brown remains convinced that definitive evidence of the hobbits' unique evolutionary provenance will emerge by studying further specimens: more skulls with the same features will make it more unlikely that the shape is caused by illness. "I think the issue will be resolved by fossils," says Brown.

The prospects for finding any more fossils look bleak, however. Political wranglings have led to a ban, for the time being, on excavations at Liang Bua, the cave where the hobbits were uncovered. Negotiations to reopen the site next year are ongoing.

Written in code
Some anthropologists have suggested that preserved DNA might provide a more definitive answer. If the Flores remains belong to H. sapiens, its DNA should fall within the range of modern human variation — if it is a unique species, its DNA should be unlike anything seen in modern humans.

But excavation, cleaning and washing of the original specimens, done in part to harden and preserve them, almost certainly destroyed any DNA that might have been present. Attempts to obtain DNA samples (primarily from teeth, in which it should be best preserved) have so far been unsuccessful.

Brown's colleague Mike Morwood remains confident that, if more specimens can be found, they will yield DNA. "Given that DNA has been recovered from 8,000-year-old pig teeth from the site, there is an excellent chance of getting H. floresiensis DNA from future excavated remains," he says.

Brown is less hopeful, however. The hobbits are thought to have died out around 12,000 years ago, and although older DNA has been recovered from Neanderthals and mammoths in Europe, the damp, tropical Indonesian climate degrades DNA far more quickly. "It's a long way from ideal for preserving DNA," he says. "I would be surprised if DNA [from these samples] lasts even 2,000 years."

Probing the past
Dating the bones should provide more clues. Hominin tools have been found on Flores dating back to 880,000 years ago, leading Brown's team to speculate that the ancestors of H. floresiensis arrived then, surviving until perhaps 12,000 years ago (the various bones have been dated as 12,000 to 90,000 years old).

That comes with its own problems. "It is hard to see how the founding populations would have been large enough to survive for 40,000 generations," says Eckhardt. It is also difficult to imagine the population remaining unchallenged for that long, particularly as sea-level rises and falls to create land bridges between islands. Perhaps instead Homo erectus was responsible for the tools, and H. sapiens, arriving much later, for the Liang Bua bones.

But that pushes back the date of H. sapiens in Indonesia — by quite a lot. H. sapiens is thought to have appeared in nearby Australia no more than 60,000 years ago.

Brown says an independent anthropological analysis soon to be published in the Journal of Human Evolution suggests that his story is correct: H. floresiensis is a unique species. Although he admits that the idea that the creatures developed their pygmy size while living on the island, as suggested in the original theory, may not be correct. "Now we think they arrived small."

Whatever the truth, the story of the Flores hominins is not over yet.

www.nature.com/news/2006/060821/full/060821-12.html