Hobbits were a separate species

[hobbit709]

http://news.yahoo.com/hobbits-were-separate-species-ancient-chompers-show-131126628.html?soc_src=mediacontentstory&soc_trk=ma

An ancient, 3-foot-tall (0.9 meters) human whose diminutive stature has earned it the nickname "hobbit" has puzzled evolutionary scientists since its little bones were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores. Some have suggested the individual was a Homo sapien with some miniaturizing disorder.

Now, teeth from the hobbit suggest it belonged to a unique species rather than a modern human with a growth disorder. The new research also suggests hobbits may share a direct ancestor with modern humans.

To learn more about the hobbit, scientists have now performed the first comprehensive analysis of the ancient human's teeth. The researchers compared the 40 known hobbit teeth with those from 490 modern humans from Asia, Oceania, Africa and Europe, as well as from a variety of extinct hominins, such as Homo habilis, which is suspected to be among the first makers of stone tools. (Hominins consist of humans and their relatives dating after the split from the chimpanzee lineage.)

The researchers found hobbit teeth were as small as those from short modern humans. However, other features of these teeth looked completely dissimilar from those of modern humans.

[mcar]

1. This is awesome!

Tolkien was right!

[KamaAina]

2. Isn't Indonesia pretty close to New Zealand?

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Their hypothesis: they were descended from Asian Homo erectus

Homo floresiensis is an extinct, diminutive hominin species discovered in the Late Pleistocene deposits of Liang Bua cave, Flores, eastern Indonesia. The nature and evolutionary origins of H. floresiensis’ unique physical characters have been intensively debated. Based on extensive comparisons using linear metric analyses, crown contour analyses, and other trait-by-trait morphological comparisons, we report here that the dental remains from multiple individuals indicate that H. floresiensis had primitive canine-premolar and advanced molar morphologies, a combination of dental traits unknown in any other hominin species. The primitive aspects are comparable to H. erectus from the Early Pleistocene, whereas some of the molar morphologies are more progressive even compared to those of modern humans. This evidence contradicts the earlier claim of an entirely modern human-like dental morphology of H. floresiensis, while at the same time does not support the hypothesis that H. floresiensis originated from a much older H. habilis or Australopithecus-like small-brained hominin species currently unknown in the Asian fossil record. These results are however consistent with the alternative hypothesis that H. floresiensis derived from an earlier Asian Homo erectus population and experienced substantial body and brain size dwarfism in an isolated insular setting. The dentition of H. floresiensis is not a simple, scaled-down version of earlier hominins.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0141614

The Pleistocene was from about 2.6 million years ago to 12,000 years ago. Homo erectus is thought to have been in Asia from about 1.2 million years ago until perhaps 100,000 years ago.

[madinmaryland]

4. You're a different species??

[Dr. Strange]

8. Crazy hobbitses!

[madinmaryland]

10. Nice post, Romo. Though I am sure you were in a RUSH to post something

about a shitty Canadian band!

[longship]

5. Island dwarfism.

(Sorry, that is what it is called.) An isolated large sized population on an island will tend towards evolving to smaller size due to less resources. This can result in speciation, mainly due to geographic isolation.

Biology 101.

(Graduate biology may disagree, but I never studied that. So caveat emptor.)

[Humanist_Activist]

9. Like the Pygmy Mammoth!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_mammoth

Pretty awesome animals, it would be cool if we could bring them back, but I think they were in a too warm a climate to have had their DNA preserved.

[panader0]

6. I've seen photos of you

and you are not "diminutive". lol
cool article

[hobbit709]

7. I'm a mutant.