Beyond bones & stones
Yesterday, Nature published an alarming find of butchered rhinoceros remains from the Kalinga site in the Cagayan Valley on Luzon in the Philippines. The long bones were clearly smashed as if to have access to marrow. The cut marks over the ribs are also clear signs of processing the meat off the bones. These marks were not... Continue Reading →
When the 3 and 1/2 foot Homo floresiensis was discovered and the age of the new species correlated with the the same time Neanderthals were dying in Europe and humans colonized Asia a lot of arms and voices were thrown in the air. People questioned the validity a new species, so different, so small... A... Continue Reading →
Discovered in 2003 in Liang Bua cave, Homo floresiensis stood about three and a half feet tall and weighed around 75 lbs. Because of their stature, they were nicknamed for the diminutive heroes in J.R.R. Tolkien's famous novels. The discovery team originally estimated that these 'halflings' lived as recently as 12,000 years ago, which would... Continue Reading →
There have been great debates about the lineage of Homo floresiensis. A new unpublished study in the Journal of Human Evolution used imaging to re-examine the layers of the Liang Bua 1 (nicknamed LB1) skull. lead author Antoine Balzeau, a scientist at France's Natural History Museum and Philippe Charlier, a physician and anthropologist at Paris-Descartes... Continue Reading →
Welcome Homo naledi yet another new branch of the Human family tree - here are a few brief thoughts on what has come to light thus far. So we finally got the big reveal from the Rising Star expedition, who on Thursday, Sept 10th, 2015, announced that fossil remains of over a dozen individuals had been found... Continue Reading →
A Homo floresiensis premolar will be drilled, and DNA extracted, according to a Nature News piece passed on by Razib, John Hawks, and Dienekes. This is not the first attempt at extracting hobbit DNA, the news article explains, "Five years ago, two teams, one from ACAD and one from the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology... Continue Reading →
Researchers from Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York confirmed that the Hobbits, or Homo floresiensis, are indeed a separate "human" species instead of a population of diseases Homo sapiens. The 7th Human Evolution Symposium, Hobbits in the Haystack: Homo floresiensis and Human Evolution was held this year at Stony Brook. A recent full-body... Continue Reading →
The controversies over the hobbits or Homo floresiensis just refuse to end. It seems that the hobbits might not be a Homo after all. I guess they found the index and ring fingers of the hobbits (Sorry, inside joke. Read this post if you want). Homo floresiensis (LB1) skull. Photo from Science Museum. Homo floresiensis,... Continue Reading →
Speaking of the Johansons and fossils ... Earlier this year, I've blogged about the 2009 Human Evolution Leakey Symposium at Stony Brook that I went to. For more about that blog post, click here. The symposium, entitled "Hobbit in the Haystack: Homo floresiensis and Human Evolution" can now be streamed live through the Stony Brook... Continue Reading →
Skull of LB1 (Homo floresiensis, or the hobbit) Photo from Science Museum New analysis by a team led by Australian National University doctoral student Debbie Argue showed that Homo floresiensis, nicknamed hobbits, were early hominin and walked out of Africa to Flores. Their findings supports the argument that Homo floresiensis had a unique wrist anatomy... Continue Reading →
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