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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 09/15/2005 : 07:59:11
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Homo floresiensis is turning out to be a very interesting, little guy. quote:
New species of early Man
By Nic Fleming and Roger Highfield in Dublin
(Filed: 14/09/2005)
A fossil of a diminutive human nicknamed "the Hobbit" does indeed represent a previously unrecognised species of early Man, according to a new technique that suggests it was a cultured little fellow.
Sceptics had argued that the Hobbit, discovered in Indonesia and first announced last year, could have been an individual who suffered from microcephalya, a disorder that limits brain growth.
The fossils' discoverers had suggested that the Hobbit was either a pygmy form of a known species or a previously undiscovered species of early human.
Yesterday Nathan Jeffery of the University of Liverpool described a new way to study the imprint left by the brain on the inside of fossilised skulls.
His work adds fuel to a debate about how advanced the Hobbit's mental abilities might have been.
It has to do with proportions of the brain, and it at least tentitavly looks like our tiny relative was sapient in somewhere close to the range of H. erectus.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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