Wednesday, October 12, 2005
08:24 PM
I don't think we're in Bree anymore

More hobbit skeletons: "David Pescovitz:
A scientific team led by the University of New England in Australia has discovered parts of at least nine Homo Floresiensis skeletons. The meter-tall people lived on the Indonesian island of Flores as recently as 18,000 years ago. Last year, one partial skeleton was found and Homo Floresiensis was quickly determined to be Boing Boing's long-lost mascot. (Previous posts here, here, and here.) From the BBC News:

'The finds further demonstrate that (the first skeleton found) is not just an aberrant or pathological individual but is representative of a long-term population,' they write in Nature.


The team contends that Homo floresiensis, with its 380-cubic-cm-sized brain, is the outcome of a phenomenon known as endemic or island dwarfing.



This sees isolated species, released from the pressures of predation but constrained by limited resources, evolving either smaller or larger forms than would otherwise be the case.

Link"

(Via Boing Boing.)