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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 03/04/2005 : 04:16:52
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The latest on the so-called Hobbit.
quote:
By JOSEPH B. VERRENGIA, AP Science Writer
Scientists working with powerful imaging computers say the spectacular "Hobbit" fossil recently discovered in Indonesia had distinctive brain features that could justify its classification as a separate — and tiny — human ancestor.
The new report, published Thursday in the online journal Science Express, seems to support the idea of a sophisticated human dwarf species marooned for eons while modern man proliferated.
The new research produced a computer-generated model that compared surface impressions on the inside of the fossil skull with brain casts of modern and ancient humans, as well as chimps and other primates.
The scientists said the model shows that the 3-foot specimen, nicknamed Hobbit, had a brain unlike anything they had seen before in the human lineage. The brain is chimplike in size, about 417 cubic centimeters.
Yet the Hobbit's brain shared wrinkled surface features with the much larger brains of both modern humans and Homo erectus, a tool-making ancestor that lived in southeast Asia more than 1 million years ago. Some of those brain features are consistent with higher cognitive traits.
I do hope that they find another skull soon.
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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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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
 Posted - 03/04/2005 : 11:10:46 [Permalink]
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| Also great news, the guy who stole the fossil bones returned them the other day. |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 03/04/2005 : 16:33:48 [Permalink]
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quote:
Also great news, the guy who stole the fossil bones returned them the other day.
Good!
And yes, they should excavate that entire island.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 03/04/2005 : 18:47:59 [Permalink]
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Another article on Homo floresiensis.
quote:
Hopping mad over 'hobbit'
Scientists fight over fossil skull and bones of humanlike creature
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
Friday, March 4, 2005
Take a single fossil skull the size of a chimpanzee that might have held a highly advanced human brain, a trove of ancient humanlike bones and teeth, and an odd assortment of stone tools from an unknown age, and you add a major new mystery to the endless puzzle of human evolution.
Now add a dose of intrigue to the mystery, as a team of angry anthropologists charges one of their colleagues with outrageously unethical behavior, including destroying evidence that might have helped to solve the arcane puzzle.
All this surfaced Thursday, furthering the astonishment of scientists around the world that began in October when the anthropologists first reported they had discovered the remains of a bizarre creature barely 3 feet tall that seemed part modern human and part ancient ancestor -- a creature they affectionately named "hobbit."
Needless to say, but I am fascinated by the whole thing. If indeed it turns out that this is skull not merely microcephalic, and it appears that it's certainly not, and it is indeed a subspcies of erectus far closer than ourselves, the implications for human evolution are stunning. How many other species branched off in bizaar ways as well?
I wonder if Noah had hobbits on the ark. Or, being human 'kind,' were they represented by Noah hisownself? Ah, the mysteries of the ancient past...
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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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