The Real "Hobbit"

[Haz]

While I was reading through one of my Focus magazines, I found an article about a real 'hobbit' they had found. They named it the 'Homo Florensis'. It standed 1 metre tall an with a brain size of only 380 cc (compared to 1300 cc for us).

So, what do you guys think of the find?

[Alex D]

Oh, I remember this from a few months ago.

Hmm, it would be the ultimate irony if they just found the skelliton of a kid.

[Haz]

Originally posted by Alex D
Hmm, it would be the ultimate irony if they just found the skelliton of a kid.

Highly unlikely, the brain would be too small for them.. I think :hrm:

[Alex D]

Ah I know, I was just joking about an interview I say with some scientist about this where the interviewer jokingly said "So what if it's just a kid?". The look on the scientists face, it was priceless, asif to say "HOW DARE YOU!"

[Kaniaz]

Scientist finds an abnormally sized skeleton.
Scientist immediately dismisses all logical possiblites about what it is and turns to the LOTR trilogy for an good, decent conlusion.
Scientist concludes that it is indeed a hobbit.
Focus, being the well respected magazine that it is (winner of best magazine to use to wipe your ass with award, three years running), publishes an article about this hobbit, as they have nothing better to do than publish constant reruns of apparent "finds".
Readers of Focus take the magazine as their gospel, spread the word about this hobbit and annoy everybody before finally going away again to come back after they've had a good, long wank over the magazine in the bathroom.

...

I am in a very good mood today. Moreso than usual.

[bradybaker]

It isn't really a hobbit you retards. That's just a nickname that has been created by the media. The story has been reported by countless science journals and magazines. Here's an excerpt from Discover's "100 Top Science Stories of 2004" issue:

"Researchers unearthed a partial, nonfossilized skeleton of what appears to be a 30-year-old woman in a limestone cave on the island of Flores, 370 miles east of Java. In life, she stood barely three feet tall and possessed a brain roughly one thid the size of a modern human's. She was not alone; bones and teeth of as many as seven adults were recovered from the same site, along with animal bones and much older stone tools. The big surprise came when scientists determined the age of the remains: The bones of these diminuitive people, who appear primitive along Homo Sapiens, date to only 18,000 years ago, when humans also walked the Earth.

These small people are not our ancestors but rather our evolutionary cousins. Dubbed Homo floresiensis, the hominid appears to have walked upright and used tools and fire. The lead researcher, paleoanthropologist Peter Brown of the University of New England in Australia, says his jaw dropped when he realized what he was looking at.

How long H. Floresiensis persisted, or whether the species ever came face to face with H. sapiens, as did Neanderthals in Europe, is unknown, but local folktales suggest that little people were living in caves on some Indonesian islands when the first Dutch explorers arrived in the 16th century. Another open question is how these people first reached Flores however long ago.

The small stature of H. floresiensis is a clear demonstration that hominids are not exempt from the laws of evolution and specifically from the "island rule," which posits that a combination of selective forces--geographic and temporal isolation, scarce resources, the absence of predators--will occasionally result in the evolutionary development of giant and dwarf species. Elsewhere in the Indonesian archipelago, a similar array of pressures conspired to produce huge lizards like the Komodo dragons, giants and tiny elephants.

On Flores, "hominids are following the same evolutionary and ecological rules as other mammal," says Tim White, a paleoanthropologist at the University of California at Berkeley who consulted on the research. "Darwin would have been delighted.""

[Kaniaz]

Originally posted by bradybaker
It isn't really a hobbit you retards. That's just a nickname that has been created by the media.
Now you've just gone and upset all the LOTR fans. They were so excited that those annoying hairy footed things might be here on planet Earth (planet crack still has them, though).

[bradybaker]

My deepest apologies.

[Kaniaz]

I'll guess I'll forgive you, just this once. And I was so hoping I would have my very own Frodo :roll:

[CryoDragoon]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_3...800/3960879.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_3960000/newsid_3960800/3960879.stm)

[Gwendolyn]

Didn't everyone already know it wasn't really a hobbit?? Come on, I mean, yes they really did find those remains, but NO it wasn't really called or was that. Bradybaker and Kaniz, I don't think anyone here actually thought it was an actual, bonifide, LOTR hobbit.....I'm sure everyone knew the nickname was given in jest to begin with. Anyway, I saw that article on slashdot.org.....I thought it was quite interesting.