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FLORES MAN It sounds too incredible to be true, but this is not a hoax. A species of tiny human has been discovered, which lived on the remote Indonesian island of Flores just 18,000 years ago. Researchers have so far unearthed remains from eight individuals who were just one metre tall, with grapefruit-sized skulls. These astonishing little people, nicknamed 'hobbits', made tools, hunted tiny elephants and lived at the same time as modern humans who were colonizing the area. [email protected] tells the story of a find that changes the world of palaeoanthropology, and challenges our perception of what it means to be human. Nature 431, 1055 - 1061 (28 October 2004); doi:10.1038/nature02999 A new small-bodied hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia P. BROWN 1 , T. SUTIKNA 2 , M. J. MORWOOD 1 , R. P. SOEJONO 2 , JATMIKO 2 , E. WAYHU SAPTOMO 2 & ROKUS AWE DUE 2 1 Archaeology & Palaeoanthropology, School of Human & Environmental Studies, University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales 2351, Australia 2 Indonesian Centre for Archaeology, Jl. Raya Condet Pejaten No. 4, Jakarta 12001, Indonesia Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to P.B. ([email protected]). Currently, it is widely accepted that only one hominin genus, Homo, was present in Pleistocene Asia, represented by two species, Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. Both species are characterized by greater brain size, increased body height and smaller teeth relative to Pliocene Australopithecus in Africa. Here we report the discovery, from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia, of an adult hominin with stature and endocranial volume approximating 1 m and 380 cm 3 , respectively—equal to the smallest-known australopithecines. The combination of primitive and derived features assigns this hominin to a new species, Homo floresiensis. The most likely explanation for its existence on Flores is long-term isolation, with subsequent endemic dwarfing, of an ancestral H. erectus population. Importantly, H. floresiensis shows that the genus Homo is morphologically more varied and flexible in its adaptive responses than previously thought. Nature 431, 1087 - 1091 (28 October 2004); doi:10.1038/nature02956 Archaeology and age of a new hominin from Flores in eastern Indonesia M. J. MORWOOD 1 , R. P. SOEJONO 2 , R. G. ROBERTS 3 , T. SUTIKNA 2 , C. S. M. TURNEY 3 , K. E. WESTAWAY 3 , W. J. RINK 4 , J.- X. ZHAO 5 , G. D. VAN DEN BERGH 6 , ROKUS AWE DUE 2 , D. R. HOBBS 1 , M. W. MOORE 1 , M. I. BIRD 7 & L. K. FIFIELD 8 1 Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology, School of Human and Environmental Studies, University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales 2351, Australia 2 Indonesian Centre for Archaeology, Jl. Raya Condet Pejaten No. 4, Jakarta 12001, Indonesia 3 GeoQuEST Research Centre, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales 2522, Australia 4 School of Geography and Geology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4K1, Canada 5 Advanced Centre for Queensland University Isotope Research Excellence (ACQUIRE), University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia 6 Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, 1790 AB Den Burg, Texel, The Netherlands 7 School of Geography and Geosciences, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AL, UK 8 Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to M.J.M. ([email protected]) and R.G.R. ([email protected]). Excavations at Liang Bua, a large limestone cave on the island of Flores in eastern Indonesia, have yielded evidence for a population of tiny hominins, sufficiently distinct anatomically to be assigned to a new species, Homo floresiensis. The finds comprise the cranial and some post-cranial remains of one individual, as well as a premolar from another individual in older deposits. Here we describe their context, implications and the remaining archaeological uncertainties. Dating by radiocarbon ( 14 C), luminescence, uranium-series and electron spin resonance (ESR) methods indicates that H. floresiensis existed from before 38,000 years ago (kyr) until at least 18 kyr. Associated deposits contain stone artefacts and animal remains, including Komodo dragon and an endemic, dwarfed species of Stegodon. H. floresiensis originated from an early dispersal of Homo erectus (including specimens referred to as Homo ergaster and Homo georgicus) that reached Flores, and then survived on this island refuge until relatively recently. It overlapped significantly in time with Homo sapiens in the region, but we do not know if or how the two species interacted.
Transcript

ARCHEOLOGIA RESTO DEL CARLINO 27/10/04

FLORES MAN

It sounds too incredible to be true, but this is not a hoax. A species of tiny human has been discovered, which lived on the remote Indonesian island of Flores just 18,000 years ago. Researchers have so far unearthed remains from eight individuals who were just one metre tall, with grapefruit-sized skulls. These astonishing little people, nicknamed 'hobbits', made tools, hunted tiny elephants and lived at the same time as modern humans who were colonizing the [email protected] tells the story of a find that changes the world of palaeoanthropology, and challenges our perception of what it means to be human.

Nature 431, 1055 - 1061 (28 October 2004); doi:10.1038/nature02999

A new small-bodied hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, IndonesiaP.BROWN1, T.SUTIKNA2, M.J.MORWOOD1, R.P.SOEJONO2, JATMIKO2, E.WAYHUSAPTOMO2 & ROKUSAWEDUE21Archaeology & Palaeoanthropology, School of Human & Environmental Studies, University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales 2351, Australia2Indonesian Centre for Archaeology, Jl. Raya Condet Pejaten No. 4, Jakarta 12001, IndonesiaCorrespondence and requests for materials should be addressed to P.B. ([email protected]).Currently, it is widely accepted that only one hominin genus, Homo, was present in Pleistocene Asia, represented by two species, Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. Both species are characterized by greater brain size, increased body height and smaller teeth relative to Pliocene Australopithecus in Africa. Here we report the discovery, from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia, of an adult hominin with stature and endocranial volume approximating 1m and 380cm3, respectivelyequal to the smallest-known australopithecines. The combination of primitive and derived features assigns this hominin to a new species, Homo floresiensis. The most likely explanation for its existence on Flores is long-term isolation, with subsequent endemic dwarfing, of an ancestral H. erectus population. Importantly, H. floresiensis shows that the genus Homo is morphologically more varied and flexible in its adaptive responses than previously thought.

Nature 431, 1087 - 1091 (28 October 2004); doi:10.1038/nature02956

Archaeology and age of a new hominin from Flores in eastern IndonesiaM.J.MORWOOD1, R.P.SOEJONO2, R.G.ROBERTS3, T.SUTIKNA2, C.S.M.TURNEY3, K.E.WESTAWAY3, W.J.RINK4, J.-X.ZHAO5, G.D.VANDENBERGH6, ROKUSAWEDUE2, D.R.HOBBS1, M.W.MOORE1, M.I.BIRD7 & L.K.FIFIELD81Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology, School of Human and Environmental Studies, University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales 2351, Australia2Indonesian Centre for Archaeology, Jl. Raya Condet Pejaten No. 4, Jakarta 12001, Indonesia3GeoQuEST Research Centre, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales 2522, Australia4School of Geography and Geology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4K1, Canada5Advanced Centre for Queensland University Isotope Research Excellence (ACQUIRE), University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia6Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, 1790 AB Den Burg, Texel, The Netherlands7School of Geography and Geosciences, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AL, UK8Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, AustraliaCorrespondence and requests for materials should be addressed to M.J.M. ([email protected]) and R.G.R. ([email protected]).Excavations at Liang Bua, a large limestone cave on the island of Flores in eastern Indonesia, have yielded evidence for a population of tiny hominins, sufficiently distinct anatomically to be assigned to a new species, Homo floresiensis. The finds comprise the cranial and some post-cranial remains of one individual, as well as a premolar from another individual in older deposits. Here we describe their context, implications and the remaining archaeological uncertainties. Dating by radiocarbon (14C), luminescence, uranium-series and electron spin resonance (ESR) methods indicates that H. floresiensis existed from before 38,000 years ago (kyr) until at least 18kyr. Associated deposits contain stone artefacts and animal remains, including Komodo dragon and an endemic, dwarfed species of Stegodon. H. floresiensis originated from an early dispersal of Homo erectus (including specimens referred to as Homo ergaster and Homo georgicus) that reached Flores, and then survived on this island refuge until relatively recently. It overlapped significantly in time with Homo sapiens in the region, but we do not know if or how the two species interacted.

NaturePublished online: 27October2004; | doi:10.1038/4311029a - http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041025/full/4311029a.htmlLittle lady of Flores forces rethink of human evolution

Rex Dalton

Dwarf hominid lived in Indonesia just 18,000 years ago.

INCLUDEPICTURE "http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041025/images/special.jpg" \* MERGEFORMATINET

This article is part of an interactive special report. Click here for full coverage.

A new human-like species - a dwarfed relative who lived just 18,000 years ago in the company of pygmy elephants and giant lizards - has been discovered in Indonesia.

Skeletal remains show that the hominins, nicknamed 'hobbits' by some of their discoverers, were only one metre tall, had a brain one-third the size of that of modern humans, and lived on an isolated island long after Homo sapiens had migrated through the South Pacific region.

"My jaw dropped to my knees," says Peter Brown, one of the lead authors and a palaeoanthropologist at the University of New England in Armidale, Australia.

The find has excited researchers with its implications - if unexpected branches of humanity are still being found today, and lived so recently, then who knows what else might be out there? The species' diminutive stature indicates that humans are subject to the same evolutionary forces that made other mammals shrink to dwarf size when in genetic isolation and under ecological pressure, such as on an island with limited resources.

The find has been classed as a new species - Homo floresiensis.

P. Brown

The new species, reported this week in Nature1,2, was found by Australian and Indonesian scientists in a rock shelter called Liang Bua on the island of Flores. The team unearthed a near-complete skeleton, thought to be a female, including the skull, jaw and most teeth, along with bones and teeth from at least seven other individuals. In the same site they also found bones from Komodo dragons and an extinct pygmy elephant called Stegodon.

The hominin bones were not fossilized, but in a condition the team described as being like "mashed potatoes", a result of their age and the damp conditions. "The skeleton had the consistency of wet blotting paper, so a less experienced excavator might have trashed the find," says Richard Roberts of the University of Wollongong, Australia.

"Only the Indonesians were present at the actual moment of discovery - the Australian contingent had departed back to Oz," says Roberts. He credits Thomas Sutikna of the Indonesian Centre for Archaeology in Jakarta for the excellent handling of the samples. The success has inspired national pride at the centre, the researchers say. "This is very important for Indonesian society," says co-author R. P. Soejono.

The discovery is prompting increased scrutiny of sites on other Southeast Asian islands, both to look for more of the same species and to place it in context with Homo sapiens and Homo erectus, our closest relative. Homo erectus was found to have lived on the nearby island of Java as long as 1.6 million years ago; the team suggests that the Flores hominins may be their descendants.

Peter Brown photographs his find.

P. Brown

Dating more bones could help determine whether the species was a short-lived branch of human evolution or survived for longer. Preliminary dating places it at about 70,000 years ago, but it may extend back 800,000 years. "We were hoping we might find a little hominin from that early," says author Michael Morwood, an archaeologist at the University of New England.

In the meantime, researchers are hoping to find DNA in the bones, which would help to clarify the relationships between species. DNA has previously been extracted from European Neanderthals living in the same time period. But they have so far failed to find DNA in the teeth of the Stegodon found in the same cave, says Brown.

FLASHMAP: http://www.nature.com/news/specials/flores/flash/map11.htmlPublished online: 27October2004; | doi:10.1038/news041025-3 A stranger from Flores

Chris Stringer

http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041025/full/041025-3.html

The skull of Homo floresiensis is tiny compared to modern day Homo sapiens.

This skull almost certainly belonged to a woman, who lived 18,000 years ago.

P. Brown P. Brown

When a new fossil is found it is often claimed that it will rewrite the anthropological textbooks. But in the case of an astonishing new discovery from Indonesia, this claim is fully justified.

The conventional view of early human evolution is that the species Homo erectus was our first relative to spread out of Africa, some 2 million years ago. The spread that our cousin achieved is indicated by a 1.8-million-year-old, primitive form of H. erectus found at Dmanisi in Georgia, and by finds at slightly younger sites in China and the Indonesian island of Java. It was not thought that H. erectus travelled any farther towards Australia than this, because although early humans could have walked to Java from Southeast Asia at times of low sea level, the islands east of Java, always separated from it by deep water, seemed beyond their reach.

However, six years ago a team of archaeologists, led by Australian Mike Morwood, published a paper claiming that a site on the island of Flores, 500 kilometres east of Java, contained stone tools dating from about 800,000 years ago1. Many researchers (myself included) doubted these claims, because if they were true they implied that H. erectus had moved beyond Java and might have used boats to do so. Such a development was thought to be unique to Homo sapiens.

When I then heard rumours about the discovery of an early human skeleton in a cave on Flores, I was ready to be surprised. However, nothing could have prepared me for how big (or small) that surprise would be.

Asian fusion

The skeleton found at Liang Bua, a cave on Flores, is of an adult who was only about one metre tall with a brain size of only 380 cubic centimetres. That is less than one-third of the average brain size for a modern human and much smaller even than those of the primitive H. erectus skulls from Dmanisi.The Flores skull shows a unique mixture of primitive and advanced characteristics. The brain is the same size as a chimpanzee's, the brain-case is low with a prominent brow ridge at the front, and the lower jaw completely lacks a chin. However, as in modern humans, the face is small and delicate. It is tucked under the brain rather than thrust out in front and the teeth are similar in size to our own. The skeleton shows a similarly strange mixture of features. The hip-bone resembles those of the pre-human African species known as australopithecines (meaning 'southern apes'). But the legs are slight, and enough detail has been preserved to show that this creature definitely walked on two legs, as we do.

Class act

So what was this strange creature, and what was it doing on Flores? The authors of the two Nature papers2,3 about the discovery and its context have had to make difficult choices in deciding how to classify the creature, although it is clear that this person was definitely not a modern human. The small brain size and the hip-bone shape might favour classification as an australopithecine, whereas the size and shape of the skull might suggest a primitive form of H. erectus.Given the unique combination of features, the authors have decided to give the specimen a new name: Homo floresiensis. This means, literally, 'man of Flores', although the authors recognize that the Liang Bua skeleton is probably that of a woman.The researchers argue that this species made the tools found in the Liang Bua cave, and may have preyed on one of the few other mammals that had also managed to reach Flores: a tiny form of the extinct, elephant-like Stegodon.

Of a certain ageIt seems that Flores man (or woman) still has one more surprise up its sleeve: its age. Astonishingly, two methods of dating agree in placing the skeleton at only about 18,000 years old. Its ancestors, probably a form of H. erectus, could have reached the island in the hunt for stegodons a million years ago, either by building some kind of boat or by walking across a short-lived land-bridge.

Their resulting isolation and inbreeding may have led them to evolve a small body size, in a process known from other mammals as 'island dwarfing'. Because of climate change or the impact of modern humans, who began to spread from Africa around 100,000 years ago, the strange story of H. floresiensis eventually ended in extinction. But modern humans must surely have encountered this tiny relative of ours, and the discovery shows how much we still have to learn about the story of human evolution.

Chris Stringer is a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London.

Published online: 27October2004; | - http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041025/pf/041025-4_pf.htmlThe Flores find

Michael Hopkin

Interview: For the archaeologists who unearthed and studied the Flores skeleton, the discovery is a potentially career-defining event. So how did they greet the find, and has it changed their ideas about human evolution? [email protected] asked Peter Brown, who led the analysis, and Mike Morwood, who directed the dig, for their reflections.

What was your initial reaction to the finding?

Peter Brown led the analysis of the remains found at Liang Bua.

P. Brown

Peter Brown: In early September 2003 Mike Morwood brought the cast of a tooth to my laboratory. It had been recovered from the excavations at Liang Bua. I realized that while it was broadly human it could not have been from a modern human, so it was exciting. More exciting was when Mike announced that the continuing excavations had uncovered a fairly complete skeleton. We quickly arranged to go to Jakarta.

Mike Morwood: The feeling was one of tremendous excitment. We had previously recovered a few very unusual hominid bones and teeth from the Pleistocene levels of Liang Bua, but now we had a major part of a skeleton, including the skull.

How quickly did you realize its importance?

MM: We knew straight away that the finding was important, but because of the size of the skull we initially thought that the individual was a young child. This view changed when [team member] Rokus Awe Due examined the teeth, which were very worn. Later detailed forensic analysis by Peter Brown indicated that she was an adult female aged about 30.

PB: Within a second of seeing the skull and mandible I realized it was important. Mike and Thomas Sutikna (the archaeologist primarily responsible for the day-to-day running of the excavation) report that when I measured the skull's approximate brain size I was clearly in shock. I knew this was the skeleton of a biped, but it had the brain size of a chimpanzee and was alive perhaps as recently as 14,000 years ago. It seemed impossible. Still does!

What had you been hoping to find when you began the dig?

MM: We were hoping to find evidence for the initial arrival of modern humans on the island, and possibly the preceding hominid species - sites further east in the Soa Basin of central Flores had previously shown that hominids were on the island by 840,000 years ago.

So was Homo floresiensis completely out of the blue?

The team excavating at Liang Bua.

M. Morwood

PB: Yes. The only other hominins of this body and brain size date to the Pleiocene epoch [between 13 million and 2 million years ago] in Africa. However, they have very different facial skeletons and teeth to H. floresiensis (smaller teeth and a less projecting face). There are also no other examples of hominins dwarfing in the way that some other mammals often do on islands. We're still not certain that H. floresiensis dwarfed on Flores, as no larger-bodied ancestor has been found.

Who made the actual discovery?

PB: The discovery was made by the archaeological team directed by Mike and R. P. Soejono [of the Indonesian Centre for Archaeology in Jakarta]. At the time the excavation was being led by Thomas Sutikna, who also did a lot of the initial cleaning and conservation of the skeleton. My role was primarily in cleaning, reconstructing and conserving the skull and some other skeletal elements, and then recording and describing the skeleton.

MM: The team was assisted by 35 local manggarai workers. Other researchers dated the finds, and analysed the associated faunal remains and stone artefacts. In fact, the input of specialists from many institutions and disciplines has been crucial to the success of our research.

What's next for human palaeontology? Given its habit of throwing up surprises, is that a silly question?

PB: Until the discovery at Liang Bua the broad pattern of human palaeontology was starting to look predictable - not such a bad thing for those of us who teach the subject. After this discovery, and perhaps an increased focus on island Southeast Asia, I predict a few major surprises ahead. Researchers will start to look a lot more closely at the isolated teeth and jaw fragments recovered from cave deposits on the Asian mainland. Some of these, previously thought to be the remains of a small ape, may turn out to be something else.

Mike Morwood directed the dig at Liang Bua.

M. Morwood

MM: My own feeling is that future archaeological discoveries in Southeast Asia will show that human dispersal and cultural change were much more complex than previously believed, and that Asia may have played a much more prominent role in these issues than adherents of the simplistic 'Out of Africa' explanation for everything would have us believe.

Does this change your own feelings about the uniqueness and modernity of Homo sapiens?

PB: Yes and no. Although it was a member of our genus, H. floresiensis is unlikely to have contributed to the gene pool of H. sapiens. So for me, its importance is not in the evolutionary story of modern humans, but in how the broad group from which modern humans evolved may have adapted and evolved to different ecosystems. Prior to this finding it would not have been thought that a hominin with the brain size, and possibly limited cognitive ability, of H. floresiensis could make the type of tools associated with the skeleton, or even get to Flores at all. I suppose that this is what challenges existing notions of what it is to be human the most.

[email protected]:Flores, God and Cryptozoology - http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041025/pf/041025-2_pf.htmlHenry Gee

The discovery of Homo floresiensis raises hopes for yeti hunters and, says Henry Gee, poses thorny questions about the uniqueness of Homo sapiens.

When the first human colonists arrived on the island of Flores in eastern Indonesia a few thousand years ago, they had no idea that they were treading on the remains of a lost world.

Until around 12,000 years ago, when a volcanic eruption seems to have ended the party, Flores was a looking-glass garden of Komodo dragons and even larger lizards, giant tortoises and enormous rats. Alongside them were tiny, primitive elephants and, as we now know, tiny, primitive people1,2.

Probably descended from full-sized Homo erectus that made landfall on Flores as much as 900,000 years ago3, the islanders dodged the dragons and hunted the elephants. Killers and quarry became smaller with each generation, instances of the well-known phenomenon of endemic dwarfing in small, inbred island populations, until they were transformed into new species. Homo erectus became Homo floresiensis.

These people, each a metre tall as an adult, lived on Flores from at least 38,000 years ago to 18,000 years ago2. But fossilization is a chancy business, so it is likely that they were there long before that interval... and long after it. They may have been alive when modern Homo sapiens arrived in the region. Yet as far as we know, Homo floresiensis survived for thousands of years, unnoticed and unmolested by humans, before becoming extinct.

Florid tales

The discovery that Homo floresiensis survived until so very recently, in geological terms, makes it more likely that stories of other mythical, human-like creatures such as yetis are founded on grains of truth.In the light of the Flores skeleton, a recent initiative4 to scour central Sumatra for 'orang pendek' can be viewed in a more serious light. This small, hairy, manlike creature has hitherto been known only from Malay folklore, a debatable strand of hair and a footprint. Now, cryptozoology, the study of such fabulous creatures, can come in from the cold.Another argument in favour of such searches comes from the recent discovery of several new species of large mammal, notably in Southeast Asia.

Easy to miss: Pseudoryx nghetinhensis was only discovered in 1992.

Source: Nature

For example, Pseudoryx nghetinhensis5, a species of ox from the remote Vu Qiang nature reserve on the border between Vietnam and Laos, was first described from hunting trophies in only 1992. Another species of bovid, the kouprey (Bos sauveli), was discovered in Indochina in 1937.Neither of these creatures is as exotic as a yeti or orang pendek, but the point is made. If animals as large as oxen can remain hidden into an era when we would expect that scientists had rustled every tree and bush in search of new forms of life, there is no reason why the same should not apply to new species of large primate, including members of the human family.

Cryptic clues

The discoverers of Homo floresiensis suggest that their find could be the first of many, and that other species of recently extinct humans might be discovered on other isolated islands.But whether other recently extinct (or extant) hominid species are found or not, the fact that even one distinct species of human was found to have lived alongside modern man not only enriches our understanding of recent human diversity; it could change our view of ourselves in a fundamental way.As far as we know, Homo sapiens is the only species of human that yet lives on the planet. It is very easy to take this solitary estate (and our consequent separateness from the rest of the animal world) for granted, so much has it become ingrained in our philosophy, ethics and religion, even our science.Until very recently, evolutionary thought was couched in terms of a linear, progressive trajectory rising from lower life forms and culminating in man. I have argued elsewhere that this view is not, regrettably, as extinct as it should be6.In palaeoanthropology, this idea is seen in the view that only one species of hominid has existed at any one time, each one succeeding the next in a scheme of orderly replacement. This idea began to crumble in the 1970s7, since when discoveries of ancient relatives of humans have revealed a marked diversity of form. Human evolution is like a bush, not a ladder8.But these discoveries concerned the more remote reaches of human ancestry. Despite the fact that some of our relatives, such as Neanderthal man and Homo erectus, are thought to have become extinct in relatively recent times9, our complacency that this view holds for recent history has not been shaken.Until now. If it turns out that the diversity of human beings was always high, remained high until very recently and might not be entirely extinguished, we are entitled to question the security of some of our deepest beliefs. Will the real image of God please stand up?

References

1. Brown P., et al. Nature, 431. 1055 - 1061 (2004).|Article|

2. Morwood M. J., et al. Nature, 431. 1087 - 1091(2004).|Article|

3. Morwood M. J., et al. Nature, 392. 173 - 176 (1998).|Article|ISI|ChemPort|

4. Green D., Tracking down the 'jungle yeti'

5. Dung V. V., et al. Nature, 363. 443 - 445 (1993).|Article|ISI|

6. Gee H., et al. Nature, 420. 611 (2002).|Article|PubMed|ISI|ChemPort|

7. Leakey R. E. F. & Walker C. Nature, 261. 572 - 574 (1976).|PubMed|ISI|ChemPort|

8. Wood B., et al. Nature, 418. 133 - 135 (2002).|Article|PubMed|ISI|ChemPort|

9. Swisher III C. C., et al. Science, 274. 1870 - 1874 (1996).|Article|PubMed|

Fascinating prehistoric dwarf skeleton found

Associated Press 27/10/04 - http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1098913191219_94322391/?hub=TopStories

In an astonishing discovery that could rewrite the history of human evolution, scientists say they have found the skeleton of a new human species, a dwarf, marooned for eons in a tropical Lost World while modern man rapidly colonized the rest of the planet.

The finding on a remote Indonesian island has stunned anthropologists like no other in recent memory. It is a fundamentally new creature that bears more of a resemblance to fictional, barefooted hobbits than modern humans.

Yet biologically speaking, it may have been closely related to us and perhaps even shared its caves with our ancestors.

The 3-foot-tall adult female skeleton found in a cave is believed 18,000 years old. It smashes the long-cherished scientific belief that our species, Homo sapiens, systematically crowded out other upright-walking human cousins beginning 160,000 years ago and that we've had Earth to ourselves for tens of thousands of years.

Instead, it suggests recent evolution was more complex than previously thought.

And it demonstrates that Africa, the acknowledged cradle of humanity, does not hold all the answers to persistent questions of how and where we came to be.

"This finding really does rewrite our knowledge of human evolution," said Chris Stringer, who directs human origins studies at the Natural History Museum in London. "And to have them present less than 20,000 years ago is frankly astonishing."

Scientists called the dwarf skeleton "the most extreme" figure to be included in the extended human family. Certainly, she is the shortest.

She is the best example of a trove of fragmented bones that account for as many as seven of these primitive individuals that lived on the equatorial island of Flores, located east of Java and northwest of Australia. The mostly intact female skeleton was found in September 2003.

Scientists have named the extinct species Homo floresiensis, or Flores Man, and details appear in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

The specimens' ages range from 95,000 to 12,000 years old, meaning they lived until the threshold of recorded human history and perhaps crossed paths with the ancestors of today's islanders.

Flores Man was hardly formidable. His grapefruit-sized brain was two-thirds smaller than ours, and closer to the brains of today's chimpanzees and transitional prehuman species in Africa than vanished 2 million years ago.

Yet Flores Man made stone tools, lit fires and organized group hunts for meat. Bones of fish, birds and rodents found near the skeleton were charred, suggesting they were cooked.

All this suggests Flores Man lived communally and communicated effectively, perhaps even verbally.

"It is arguably the most significant discovery concerning our own genus in my lifetime," said anthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University, who reviewed the research independently.

Discoveries simply "don't get any better than that," proclaimed Robert Foley and Marta Mirazon Lahr of Cambridge University in a written analysis.

To others, the species' baffling combination of slight dimensions and coarse features bears almost no meaningful comparison either to modern humans or to our larger, archaic cousins.

They suggest that Flores Man doesn't belong in the genus Homo at all, even if it was a recent contemporary. But they are unsure where to classify it.

"I don't think anybody can pigeonhole this into the very simple-minded theories of what is human," anthropologist Jeffrey Schwartz of the University of Pittsburgh. "There is no biological reason to call it Homo. We have to rethink what it is."

For now, most researchers have been limited to examining digital photographs of the specimens. The female partial skeleton and other fragments are stored in a laboratory in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Researchers from Australia and Indonesia found the partial skeleton 13 months ago in a shallow limestone cave known as Liang Bua. The cave, which extends into a hillside for about 130 feet, has been the subject of scientific analysis since 1964. Fenced off and patrolled by guards, it is surrounded by coffee farms.

Older stone tools and other artifacts previously found on the island suggest that Flores Man is part of a substantial archaic human lineage.

"So the 18,000-year-old skeleton cannot be some kind of 'freak' that we just happened to stumble across," said one of the discoverers, radiocarbon dating expert Richard G. Roberts of the University of Wollongong in Australia.

But the environment in which Flores Man lived was indeed peculiar, and scientists say it probably contributed to the specimen's unusually small dimensions.

Millenia ago, Flores was a kind of a looking-glass world, a real-life Middle-earth inhabited by a menagerie of fantastical creatures like giant tortoises, elephants as small as ponies and rats as big as hunting dogs.

It even had a dragon, although they were giant lizards like today's carnivorous Komodo dragons rather than the treasure-hoarding Smaug described by novelist J.R.R. Tolkien in his "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

Artifacts suggest that a big-boned human cousin, Homo erectus, migrated from Java to Flores and other islands, perhaps by bamboo raft, nearly 1 million years ago.

Researchers suspect that Flores Man probably is an H. erectus descendant that was squeezed by the pressures of natural selection.

Nature is full of mammals deer, squirrels and pigs, for example living in marginal, isolated environments that gradually dwarf when food isn't plentiful and predators aren't threatening.

This is the first time that the evolution of dwarfism has been recorded in a human relative, said the study's lead author, Peter Brown of the University of New England in Australia.

Just how this primitive, remnant species managed to hang on is uncertain. Inbreeding certainly would've been a danger. Geologic evidence suggests a massive volcanic eruption sealed its fate some 12,000 years ago, along with other unusual island species like the dwarf elephant species, stegodon.

Now, scientists are more puzzled by the specimen's jumble of features that appear to be borrowed from different human ancestors.

This much is clear: Its worn teeth and fused skull show it was an adult. The shape of the pelvis is female. The skull is wide like H. erectus. But the sides are rounder and the crown traces an arc from ear to ear. The skull of H. erectus has straight sides and a pointed crown, they said.

The lower jaw contains large, blunt teeth and roots like Australopithecus, a prehuman ancestor in Africa more than 3 million years ago. The front teeth are smaller and more like modern human teeth.

The eye sockets are big and round, but unlike other members of the Homo genus, it has hardly any chin or browline.

The rest of the skeleton looks as if it walked upright, but the pelvis and the shinbone have primitive, even apelike features.

Bones from the species' feet and hands have not yet been found. Delicate artifacts found in the cave were described as "toy-sized" versions of stone tools made by H. erectus. They suggest that Flores Man retained intelligence and dexterity to flake small weapons with sharp edges, even if its body shrunk over time.

"I've spent a sleepless night trying to figure out what to do with this thing," said Schwartz. "It's a mind-blower. It makes me think of nothing else in this world."

Even more speculative is whether Flores Man met with modern humans, and what might've happened.

Folklore experts have reported persistent legends of little people living on Flores and nearby islands. Islanders called the creature "Ebu Gogo" and say it was about 3 feet tall.

The dimensions of the skull and skeleton of H. floresiensis fall well outside the extremes seen in H. sapiens and the 'erectines' (a range of hominin species, of which H. erectus is the most familiar). It is closer in size to, but even smaller than, the australopithecines, of which the best known example is Lucy

H. floresiensis was part of the Asian dispersals of the descendants of H. ergaster and H. erectus.

Resto del Carlino 27/10/04

Scoperto 'nuovo' ominide - Una donna di 18000 anni fa

Londra, 27 ottobre 2004 - Era alto poco pi di un metro, aveva un cranio dalle capacit limitate e i suoi tratti erano a met tra quelli dei primi ominidi e i moderni Homo sapiens. Ma appartiene ad una specie tutta nuova e particolare che visse sull'isola indonesiana di Flores almeno fino a 18.000 anni fa.

Sono queste le caratteristiche principali del nuovo ominide scoperto da un gruppo di ricercatori australiani e indonesiani nei sedimenti di una caverna nei pressi della localit di Liang Bua. A dare la notizia del ritrovamento la rivista Nature che dedica la sua copertina al ritratto del cranio, quasi del tutto intatto di questo nuovo membro della nostra famiglia battezzata Homo floresiensis, dal nome dell'isola sulla quale sono venuti alla luce i suoi resti.

Autori della scoperta sono Peter Brown, Mike Morwood e Bert Roberts dell'Archaeology & Palaeoanthropology, School of Human & Environmental Studies, University of New England, di Armidale (Australia) e i loro colleghi dell'Indonesian Centre for Archaeology. Il ritrovamento di questi resti appartenenti ad una donna, un cranio completo di mandibola e dentatura e altre ossa tra cui parte del bacino, la tibia e il femore, rappresenta per la paleoantropologia un vero e proprio enigma. Come infatti indicano sull'articolo apparso su Nature gli autori della scoperta, i tratti di questo ominide sono a met strada tra quelli dei primi Homo erectus, e quelle delle forme di ominidi pi moderni. Con in pi alcune caratteristiche del tutto particolari, come la sua ridotta statura, che potrebbe rappresentare una forma di adattamento di questo ominide all'isolamento. Inoltre anche il luogo in cui stato ritrovato lo scheletro, crea delle difficolt alle teorie attuali sull'evoluzione umana. L'isola di Flores si trova infatti ad Est della cosiddetta Linea di Wallace, la linea che segna una sorta di barriera naturale alla migrazioni di diverse specie animali e vegetali.

La teorie attuali indicano che la colonizzazione dell'Australia da parte dei primi uomini sia avvenuta sfruttando le particolari condizioni causate dall'abbassamento del livello dei mari durante le glaciazioni. Ma anche in questo periodo, l'Australia continuava a rimanere isolata anche da un braccio di mare largo solo una trentina di miglia, corrispondente all'attuale canale di Lombok, tra le isole di Lombok e quella di Bali. Solo i primi Homo sapiens, arrivati in Australia intorno ai 45-50mila anni fa, furono in grado di superare questo ostacolo. Ma ora il ritrovamento di floresiensis ad Est della linea di Wallace sembra smentire questa ipotesi. Ma a destare interesse soprattutto l'et di questi reperti. Lo scheletro, molto fragile e non ancora fossilizzato, risale infatti ad appena 18.000 anni fa e altri resti non completi sono stati datati a un periodo compreso tra i 95 mila e i 12 mila anni fa, quando l'eruzione di un vulcano probabilmente port la specie all'estinzione insieme agli elefanti pigmei che cacciava. Questo in termini antropologici significa che praticamente fino a ieri sulla Terra esistevano ancora ominidi diversi dal Sapiens che occupavano delle particolari nicchie ecologiche.

Corriere della Sera 27 ottobre 2004

SCIENZE

Scoperti i resti in Indonesia: era come un hobbit - L'uomo preistorico? Era alto soltanto un metro

E' stato battezzato uomo di Flores e rappresenta una nuova specie. Viveva diciottomila anni fa

FLORES (INDONESIA) - Era alto circa un metro. Come gli hobbit descritti da Tolkien ne Il signore degli anelli. Ma a differenza dei personaggi del romanzo dell'autore britannico veramente esistito.

NUOVA SPECIE - Diciottomila anni fa sullisola di Flores, in Indonesia, viveva infatti un uomo primitivo, fino ad ora sconosciuto, erede dell'Homo erectus.

Il dottor Henry Gee mostra il teschio dell'uomo di Flores (Ansa)

Come racconta una ricerca che uscir sul prossimo numero di Nature che uscir gioved, i resti di un antico scheletro sono stati ritrovati nelle profondit di una caverna in localit Liang Bua, un ritrovamento che ha destato grande sorpresa non solo per leccezionalit del reperto, quanto per il fatto che testimonianza della variet con la quale il genere umano si evoluto. Quando lo scheletro stato riportato alla luce saltato subito agli occhi di Peter Brown e dei suoi colleghi, University New England, Armidale Australia, che si trattava di resti fossili appartenenti ad un individuo "insolito", che sebbene adulto e ben formato, non arrivava al metro di altezza ed aveva un cranio grande quanto un pompelmo.

UOMO DI FLORES - Secondo gli scienziati, luomo di Flores, cos stata chiamata la nuova specie di uomo primitivo, discende direttamente da una forma estinta del genere Homo, nota come Homo erectus.

Una serie di teschi: al centro quello dell'uomo di Flores (Afp)

LHomo erectus si diffuso dallAfrica allAsia, raggiungendo lIndonesia circa due milioni di anni fa e lo scheletro di Liang Bua potrebbe essere il rappresentante di una popolazione di Homo erectus, rimasta isolata sullisola di Flores qualche centinaio di migliaia di anni fa, che si evoluta in una nuova specie, con caratteristiche morfologiche peculiari. Le piccole dimensioni del reperto, fanno notare gli scienziati, inquadra questa specie definita "nana", nella bizzarra fauna, ormai estinta, di Flores. Sembra che, su questa isola, fino a tempi relativamente recenti abitassero, animali un po da fantascienza, del genere Mondo perduto, come lucertole giganti o il celebre elefante nano Stegodon. Luomo di Flores arriv sullisola, in un epoca non ancora precisa, quando a Java vivevano popolazioni di Homo erectus e molto, molto prima che lHomo sapiens, nuova specie emergente (la nostra), iniziasse la colonizzazione anche di questa regione.

27 ottobre 2004 - Corriere.it anche sul tuo cellulare Tim, Vodafone o WindTiny Human a Big Evolutionary Tale

AFP

Oct. 27, 2004 In one of the most spectacular fossil finds in decades, anthropologists announce on Thursday they have found the bones of a tiny human who is a twig in mankind's family tree.

The height of a chimpanzee and with a skull the size of a grapefruit, the wee hominid lived around 18,000 years ago on the remote eastern Indonesian island of Flores, they said.

She is believed to be an extinct Asian offshoot of Homo erectus, the forerunners of Homo sapiens, as anatomically modern humans are called.

But she was so dramatically different from either H. erectus or H. sapiens that she should be classified as a separate species of Homo, said the team report on Thursday in the British weekly scientific journal Nature.

She measured just a meter or so (3.25 feet) high and had a brain size of 380 cc (13 fluid ounces), just a quarter of modern human's. They have dubbed the hominid Homo floresiensis, "Man of Flores."

She is the smallest of the 10 known species of the genus Homo, the hominid that arose out of Africa about 2.5 million years ago.

Their theory, based on the previous discovery of stone tools on Flores, is that H. erectus arrived on Flores about 800,000 years ago and became genetically marooned from the rest of mankind.

Over thousands of years, evolutionary pressure caused the colony to shrink in height a paucity of food and over-population favored the survival of smaller individuals, whose genes were then passed on to their infants.

"We interpret H. floresiensis as a relict lineage (of Homo) that reached, and was then preserved on, a Wallacean island refuge," said the authors, led by Peter Brown of University New England in Australia. "In isolation, these populations underwent protacted, endemic change."

As the millennia passed, Homo erectus petered out in the rest of world, to be replaced by taller hominids with bigger brains.

The most successful was H. sapiens, which strode out of Africa about 150,000 years ago and eventually conquered the planet, becoming the only living species of Homo today. H. sapiens migrated across southern Asia between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, according to a conventional scenario.

Humans then forked northeast, crossing over into the Americas via island stepping-stones to Alaska, and also southeast, to colonize the Indonesian archipelago, the South Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, according to a popular scenario.

So at some point, H. sapiens also showed up on Flores, possibly living there for tens of thousand years alongside H. floriensis.

The Rest of the Story What happened then is one of the big unanswerable questions, Brown's team said.

It is impossible to know how the two species interacted. Did H. sapiens slaughter its smaller neighbors? Or did H. floresiensis eventually become extinct because it could no longer compete for food against its bigger cousins?

Another question is whether the two species may have interbred, possibly adding to the genetic mix that is H. sapiens today.

That puzzle also applies to the Neanderthals, the hominids who lived in Europe, parts of Central Asia and the Middle East for some 170,000 years until they inexplicably disappeared around 28,000-30,000 years ago.

"The find is startling ... among the most outstanding discoveries in palaeoanthropology for half a century," University of Cambridge anthropologists Marta Mirazon Lahr and Robert Foley said in a commentary, also carried in Nature.

"It is breathtaking to think that such a different species (of hominid) existed so recently," they said. "(...) Our global dominance may be far more recent than we thought."

The Flores discovery includes the skull, femur and tibia, hand fragments and bits of vertebrae from one individual, apparently a female, and a premolar from another.

They were unearthed from the floor of a cave at Liang Bua, in the middle of western Flores, where amateur anthropologists first started excavating in 1965.

The authors are certain that the skeleton, called LB1, is that of a full-grown adult human, not a dwarf H. sapiens or an ape.

Islands are famous for Darwinian selection, for shaping the genetic path of species through climate, terrain and food availability and lack of breeding with other species. Flores was once the home of a dwarf elephant called a Stegodon, the remains of which were found alongside the H. floriensis fossils.

Also found there were sharp and pointed bones that may have been tools, but it is debatable as to whether these were made by H. floresiensis or by H. sapiens.

Repubblica. http://www.repubblica.it/2004/j/sezioni/scienza_e_tecnologia/flores/flores/flores.html

Su 'Nature' il ritrovamento sull'isola di Flores di uno scheletro appartenente a una donna che risale a 18mila anni faNuova specie di ominide scoperta in IndonesiaAlto poco pi di un metro, cranio dalle capacit limitate, tratti a met tra quelli dei primi ominidi e il moderno Homo sapiens

LONDRA - Alto poco pi di un metro, un cranio dalle capacit limitate, tratti a met tra quelli dei primi ominidi e il moderno Homo sapiens. E' la specie tutta nuova che visse sull'isola indonesiana di Flores almeno fino a 18.000 anni fa e che stata scoperta da un gruppo di ricercatori australiani e indonesiani nei sedimenti di una caverna nei pressi della localit di Liang Bua. A dare la notizia del ritrovamento la rivista Nature che dedica la sua copertina al ritratto del cranio, quasi del tutto intatto di questo nuovo membro della nostra famiglia battezzata Homo floresiensis, dal nome dell'isola sulla quale sono venuti alla luce i suoi resti.

Autori della scoperta sono Peter Brown, Mike Morwood e Bert Roberts dell'Archaeology & Palaeoanthropology, School of Human & Environmental Studies, University of New England, di Armidale (Australia) e i loro colleghi dell'Indonesian Centre for Archaeology.

Il ritrovamento di questi resti appartenenti ad una donna, un cranio completo di mandibola e dentatura e altre ossa tra cui parte del bacino, la tibia e il femore, rappresenta per la paleoantropologia un vero e proprio enigma. Come infatti indicano sull'articolo apparso su Nature gli autori della scoperta, i tratti di questo ominide sono a met strada tra quelli dei primi Homo erectus, e quelle delle forme di ominidi pi moderni. Con in pi alcune caratteristiche del tutto particolari, come la sua ridotta statura, che potrebbe rappresentare una forma di adattamento di questo ominide all'isolamento.

Anche il luogo in cui stato ritrovato lo scheletro, crea delle difficolt alle teorie attuali sull'evoluzione umana. L'isola di Flores si trova infatti ad Est della cosiddetta Linea di Wallace, la linea che segna una sorta di barriera naturale alla migrazioni di diverse specie animali e vegetali. La teorie attuali indicano che la colonizzazione dell'Australia da parte dei primi uomini sia avvenuta sfruttando le particolari condizioni causate dall'abbassamento del livello dei mari durante le glaciazioni.

Ma anche in questo periodo, l'Australia continuava a rimanere isolata anche da un braccio di mare largo solo una trentina di miglia, corrispondente all'attuale canale di Lombok, tra le isole di Lombok e quella di Bali. Solo i primi Homo sapiens, arrivati in Australia intorno ai 45-50mila anni fa, furono in grado di superare questo ostacolo. Ma ora il ritrovamento di Floresiensis ad Est della linea di Wallace sembra smentire questa ipotesi.

Ma a destare interesse soprattutto l'et di questi reperti. Lo scheletro, molto fragile e non ancora fossilizzato, risale infatti ad appena 18.000 anni fa e altri resti non completi sono stati datati a un periodo compreso tra i 95 mila e i 12 mila anni fa, quando l'eruzione di un vulcano probabilmente port la specie all'estinzione insieme agli elefanti pigmei che cacciava. Questo in termini antropologici significa che praticamente fino a ieri sulla Terra esistevano ancora ominidi diversi dal Sapiens che occupavano delle particolari nicchie ecologiche. (27 ottobre 2004)

SCIENCE NEWS October 27, 2004

Mini Human Species Unearthed

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=000B7CEA-EA31-117E-AA3183414B7F0000

Image: PETER BROWN

HOMO FLORESIENSIS (left) and H. sapiens (right)

More on this story from Scientific American.com: Digging Deeper: Q&A with "Flores man" discoverer Peter Brown

From Nature: Flores Man

In what is being hailed as one of the most spectacular paleoanthropological finds of the past century, researchers have unearthed the remains of a dwarf human species that survived on the Indonesian island of Flores until just 13,000 years ago. The discovery significantly extends the known range of physical variation in our genus, Homo, and reveals that H. sapiens shared the planet with other humans much more recently than previously believed.

Scientists writing today in Nature describe a partial skeleton from a limestone cave on the island known as Liang Bua. Dubbed LB1, the specimen appears to have belonged to an adult female who stood barely a meter tall and had a skull the size of a grapefruit--the smallest member of the human family yet. Although closer in overall size to the much older australopithecines, such as Lucy, the new hominid apparently resembles members of the genus Homo in features related to chewing and upright-walking. Discoverers Peter Brown of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, and his colleagues assign LB1 to a new species of Homo, H. floresiensis. They further propose that it was a dwarfed descendant of H. erectus, which is thought to have arrived in Southeast Asia by around 1.7 million years ago.

Dwarfing is well known to occur in island-dwelling mammals larger than rabbits, presumably because islands tend to have limited food supplies. Indeed, H. floresiensis wasn't the only miniature on Flores: pint-size bones of an elephant relative known as Stegodon have turned up at Liang Bua as well. Islands can also breed giants, however, and Liang Bua has yielded evidence of these as well, including Komodo dragons and very large rodents.

Just as astonishing as H. floresiensis's small size are the tools it is said to have used. In a second report in Nature, Michael Moorwood, also at the University of New England, and his collaborators describe stone artifacts found in association with the hominid remains. Most are simple flake tools, but the researchers also found points, perforators, blades and microblades that they say were most likely hafted as barbs. These more advanced tools--comparable in their complexity to those known to have been crafted by H. sapiens--turned up amidst baby Stegodon bones, suggesting to the team that this tiny human was hunting tiny elephants.

An isolated arm bone found deeper in the Liang Bua deposit, as well as the remains of several other individuals recovered more recently, indicate that H. floresiensis had a long history on the island, and was present there 95,000 years ago. This bantam human therefore significantly overlapped in time with Homo sapiens, who arrived in the region sometime between 55,000 and 35,000 years ago. How they interacted, however--if they ever even met face to face--remains a mystery.

Future work, team members say, will focus on trying to find large-bodied ancestors of H. floresiensis on Flores. They also plan to investigate other Indonesian islands, such as Java and Sulawesi. "Perhaps the far-flung Indonesian islands have acted as a series of independent 'Noah's Arks,' each with their own trademark endemic dwarfs and giants," comments team member Bert Roberts of the University of Wollongong in New South Wales. "In this regard, no amount of navel-gazing and hypothesizing can substitute for dogged field work, because only by excavating deposits will surprises such as Flores man be brought to light." --Kate Wong

ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/print?id=198867

Scientists Find Ancient Hobbit-Sized People

Skeletal Remains Reveal Human Species That Measured 3-Feet High

By AMANDA ONION

Oct. 27, 2004 - Once upon a time, on an isolated island of Indonesia, there lived a colony of little people -- very little people.

Not only did anthropologists find the skeletal remains of a hobbit-sized, 30-year-old adult female, in this fairy-tale-like discovery they also uncovered in the same limestone cave the remains of a Komodo dragon, stone tools and a dwarf elephant.

Subsequent finds of other similarly sized, 3-foot-tall humans with brains the size of grapefruits in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores suggest these 18,000-year-old specimens weren't a quirk of an ancient hominin, but part of an entire species of miniature people whose existence overlapped with that of modern Homo sapiens.

"We now have the remains of at least seven hobbit-sized individuals at the cave site, so the 18,000-year-old skeleton cannot be some kind of 'freak' that we just happened to stumble across first," said Bert Roberts, an anthropologist at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia, and co-author of the study about the find in this week's issue of the journal "Nature."

Peter Brown, lead researcher of the study and an anthropologist at the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, says that although modern humans had reached Australia by 45,000 years ago, so far there's no evidence suggesting the small species of human and modern humans ever met.

Still, another author, Mike Morwood, also of the University of New England, says because the two existed in the same general region for nearly 30,000 years, "It is certain that they came face to face on occasion."

Island Adaptation

Although the odd little humans likely left no descendants, and therefore no mark on modern human biology, the scientists say this is the first documentation of the entirely new species of hominins that apparently adapted and lived for thousands of years in caves on the isolated island. As for their size, their limited habitat and its hot, humid conditions may have been key factors.

Brown and the other authors suggest that the newly found species, named Homo floresiensis, arrived on the island of Flores, in Indonesia's Nusa Tenggara region, in the form of Homo erectus, the first large-brained hominin that emerged some 2 million years ago in Africa and Asia.

Morwood has argued that Homo erectus reached the island by building some kind of water vessel since Flores was likely never connected to the mainland by a land bar. No evidence of a prehistoric boat has been found on the island, however, and many scientists remain skeptical that primitive man could manage the feat. But besides swimming (which is unlikely), the only other known possibility would be rafting -- catching a ride on a micro-island that had broken off a mainland. And anthropologists say this probably would not have worked for a large creature like Homo erectus.

"It's hard to imagine humans being rafted in that way," said Rick Potts, curator of the Institute of Human Origins at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. "The idea of how they got there is still very much in the air."

However Homo erectus got to the island, once it arrived, Brown suggests its generations began to shrink in size. Fossils show that Homo erectus was fairly tall, standing, on average, 5 feet 10 inches. On Flores, due to the limited resources on the 31-square-mile island, smaller versions of the hominin may have survived best, since they would have required less food to survive. This could have led to the evolution of the new, miniature species.

Hot and humid weather on the island could also have favored smaller bodies in the same way it may have led to the small size of Pygmy populations who live in tropical forests of Africa. The theory is since the surface area of a small body is greater in relation to its volume, it's easier to cool off. Plus, less energy is needed to move a small person's body weight, so less heat is generated.

Similar factors were probably also at play to favor the pint-sized Stegodon, whose remains were found in the same cave as the tiny person. Evidence suggests the dwarfed people may have hunted the miniature elephant-like creatures in groups. The authors point to an array of stone tools, also found in the cave, which were likely used in the hunt and to butcher prey. Remains of a Komodo dragon, an oversized lizard that still roams the island today, were also found in the cave, along with charred bones of birds, rats and fish suggesting they may have been cooked and eaten by the small humans.

Tiny Brains

More puzzling than their body size, however, is the apparently puny size of the early humans' brains. Today, the average human brain measures between 1,400 and 1,500 cubic centimeters. Homo erectus had a skull that packed a brain about two-thirds the size of today's human brains, or about 800-1,000 cubic centimeters. The skull found on Flores suggests these small humans operated with a brain only 380 cubic centimeters in size -- the smallest known brain of any known hominin species.

Despite their brains' diminutive size, Homo floresiensis was apparently smart enough to make and use tools, use fire and to find the ideal shelter of the limestone cave.

"The fact that it had these behavioral associations with such a small cranial capacity is astounding," said Potts. "It's a little weird."

Despite the puzzlingly small brain size, Potts calls the discovery "terrific" and the research "convincing," although he adds that a team of paleo-anthropologists will need to see the bones and travel to the site in order for the science community to reach a consensus about adding a new branch to the already bushy tree of human evolution.

Evolutionary Tree Gets Bushier

Other anthropologists are skeptical that the find is all it is cracked up to be. Yohannes Haile-Selassie, curator at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Ohio, thinks naming it a new species is premature.

"I have mixed feelings about this whole thing," he said. "This is one specimen. It could have a small body and brain size due to disease or pathology."

In fact, many anthropologists have argued that in recent years, scientists have been adding too many new species to the human evolutionary tree. They say scientists have become too quick to call what may simply be an unusual individual a member of a whole new species.

"This will definitely be fuel for the splitters over those who see many specimens as evidence of a new species," said David Begun, an anthropologist at the University of Toronto.

The authors counter that since they submitted their paper they have found five to seven more remains in the cave site whose existence ranges from as long ago as 95,000 years ago to as recently as 13,000 years ago. The features of the new bones suggest they're of similar petite proportions. They add that characteristics seen in modern people who have pathologies causing a small brain were not evident in the ancient remains.

As for the little people's demise, geological records show there was a massive volcanic eruption on the island about 12,000 years ago, which could have eliminated any lingering populations. The first signs of modern man on the island date to just 11,000 years ago.

Roberts says the volcano could have "sealed the fate of the hobbits and the pygmy elephants." But local folk tales on the island of Flores hint that the small people may have persisted even longer.

"The stories suggest there may be more than a grain of truth to the idea that they were still living on Flores up until the Dutch arrived in the 1500s," Roberts said. "The stories suggest they lived in caves. The villagers would leave gourds with food out for them to eat, but legend has it these were the guests from hell -- they'd eat everything, including the gourds!"

So did the two human species meet and interact? For now a lack of evidence means we can only wonder -- and settle for the fictional tales of J.R.R. Tolkien. INCLUDEPICTURE "http://www.ctv.ca/archives/CTVNews/images/20041027/dwarf041027/160_skull_20041027.jpg" \* MERGEFORMATINET


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