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["Toni Hawryluk" <tonihawr AT msn.com>]

> which would you prefer?  Bush who is going to shoot and hopefully kill the 
> SOB trying to invade your home (snip)
> Daniel Van; Kelley

No, I would prefer the Kerry who actually *was*
under fire - and presumably *can* still shoot
instead of the wuss whose father did everything
*for* it to *get* it a uniform which it disgraced 
by evading anything resembling a conflict - why
do you think the yellow-bellied coward is so 
gung-ho on killing now that *it* can get away 
with it being protected on all sides even from
bad news ???
>From tonihawr AT msn.com  Thu Oct 28 16:40:06 2004
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Subject: [Homestead] Fw: macho scientists/researchers .... ; ))
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Even though what they found was *female*, 'they' chose a
masculine name for it .... It's been awhile since I read 

The Hobbit (and The Lord of the Rings) but I don't remember

any ??  female hobbits ??   What are these "researchers" 

going to do when/if it turns out that there *were* *only* 

females on this island, and that they reproduced by 

parthenogenesis ??  from : 



http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/p1/partheno.asp<http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/p1/partheno.asp>



bottom line :

".... For example, offspring produced by some types 

[of animals] are identical in all inherited respects to 

the mother."  -  big <g>  - threatening, isn't it ?!?



http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1027_041027_homo_floresiensis.html

 

"Hobbit" Discovered: Tiny Human Ancestor Found in Asia 

 

Hillary Mayell        for National Geographic News      October 27, 2004

 

Scientists have found skeletons of a hobbit-like species of human that grew 
no larger than a three-year-old modern child (See 
pictures<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/photogalleries/homo_floresiensis/>).
 The tiny humans, who had skulls about the size of grapefruits, lived with 
pygmy elephants and Komodo dragons on a remote island in Indonesia 18,000 
years ago. 

Australian and Indonesian researchers discovered bones of the miniature 
humans in a cave on Flores, an island east of Bali and midway between Asia 
and Australia. 

Scientists have determined that the first skeleton they found belongs to a 
species of human completely new to science. Named Homo floresiensis, after 
the island on which it was found, the tiny human has also been dubbed by dig 
workers as the "hobbit," after the tiny creatures from the Lord of the Rings 
books. 

The original skeleton, a female, stood at just 1 meter (3.3 feet) tall, 
weighed about 25 kilograms (55 pounds), and was around 30 years old at the 
time of her death 18,000 years ago. 

The skeleton was found in the same sediment deposits on Flores that have also 
been found to contain stone tools and the bones of dwarf elephants, giant 
rodents, and Komodo dragons, lizards that can grow to 10 feet (3 meters) and 
that still live today. 

Homo floresienses has been described as one of the most spectacular 
discoveries in paleoanthropology in half a century-and the most extreme human 
ever discovered. 

The species inhabited Flores as recently as 13,000 years ago, which means it 
would have lived at the same time as modern humans, scientists say. 

"To find that as recently as perhaps 13,000 years ago, there was another 
upright, bipedal-although small-brained-creature walking the planet at the 
same time as modern humans is as exciting as it was unexpected," said Peter 
Brown, a paleoanthropologist at the University of New England in New South 
Wales, Australia. 

Brown is a co-author of the study describing the findings, which appears in 
the October 28 issue of the science journal Nature. The National Geographic 
Society's Committee for Research and Exploration has sponsored research 
related to the discovery. The find will be covered in greater detail in a 
documentary airing early next year on the National Geographic Channel. 

"It is totally unexpected," said Chris Stringer, director of the Human 
Origins program at the Natural History Museum in London. "To have early 
humans on the remote island of Flores is surprising enough. That some are 
only about a meter tall with a chimp-size brain is even more remarkable. That 
they were still there less than 20,000 years ago, and [that] modern humans 
must have met them, is astonishing." 

The researchers estimate that the tiny people lived on Flores from about 
95,000 years ago until at least 13,000 years ago. The scientists base their 
theory on charred bones and stone tools found on the island. The blades, 
perforators, points, and other cutting and chopping utensils were apparently 
used to hunt big game. 

In an accompanying Nature commentary, Marta Mirazón Lahr and Robert Foley, 
both with the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies at the 
University of Cambridge, England, describe Homo floresiensis as changing our 
understanding of late human evolutionary geography, biology, and culture. 

The discovery shows that the genus Homo is more varied and more flexible in 
its ability to adapt than previously thought. (The genus Homo also includes 
modern humans, Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and Neandertals-all of which are 
marked by relatively large braincases, erect posture, opposable thumbs, and 
the ability to make tools.) 

"Homo floresiensis is an addition to the short list of other human species 
that lived at the same time as modern humans. I think people will be 
surprised to learn that not so long ago, we were not alone," said Brown. 

Lost World of Tiny People 

Despite its smaller body size, smaller brain, and mixture of primitive and 
advanced anatomical features, the new species falls firmly within the genus 
Homo. The researchers speculate that the hobbit and her peers evolved from a 
normal-size, island-hopping Homo erectus population that reached Flores 
around 840,000 years ago. 

"Physically, they were about the size of a three-year old Homo sapiens 
[modern human] child, but with a braincase only one-third as large," said 
Richard Roberts, a geochronologist at the University of Wollongong, 
Australia, and one on the co-authors of the research paper. "They had 
slightly longer arms than us. More conspicuously, they had hard, thicker 
eyebrow ridges than us, a sharply sloping forehead, and no chin." 

"While they don't look like modern humans, some of their behaviors were 
surprisingly human," said Brown, the study co-author. 

The Flores people used fire in hearths for cooking and hunted stegodon, a 
primitive dwarf elephant found on the island. Although small, the stegodon 
still weighed about 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds), and would pose a 
significant challenge to a hunter the size of a three-year-old modern human 
child. Hunting must have required joint communication and planning, the 
researchers say. 

Almost all of the stegodon bones associated with the human artifacts are of 
juveniles, suggesting the tiny humans selectively hunted the smallest 
stegodons. The Flores humans' diets also included fish, frogs, snakes, 
tortoises, birds, and rodents. 

"The hobbit was nobody's fool," Roberts said. "They survived alongside us 
[Homo sapiens] for at least 30,000 years, and we're not known for being very 
amiable eco-companions. And the hobbits were managing some extraordinary 
things-manufacturing sophisticated stone tools, hunting pygmy elephants, and 
crossing at least two water barriers to reach Flores from mainland Asia-with 
a brain only one-third the size of ours. 

"Given that Homo floresiensis is the smallest human species ever discovered, 
they out-punch every known human intellectually, pound for pound." 

Both the tiny humans and the dwarfed elephants appear to have become extinct 
at about the same time as the result of a major volcanic eruption. 

Mingling of the Human Tribes 

There is no evidence of modern humans reaching Flores before 11,000 years 
ago, so it is unknown whether the hobbit intermingled with modern humans. The 
researchers found hobbit and pygmy stegodon remains only below a 
12,000-year-old volcanic ash layer. Modern human remains were found only 
above the layer. 

Still, rumors, myths, and legends of tiny creatures have swirled around the 
isolated island for centuries. It's certainly possible that they interacted 
with modern humans, according to the researchers. 

"Looked at from a regional perspective, we definitely have modern humans in 
Australia from at least 40,000 years ago, and in Borneo from at least 43,000 
years ago," Roberts said. "So there was temporal overlap between the hobbits 
and ourselves from at least 40,000 years ago until at least 18,000 years 
ago-more than 20,000 years minimum. What was the nature of their interaction? 
We have absolutely no idea. We need more sites and more hard evidence, and 
that's the next phase of our investigation." 

Island Dwarfing 

Researchers are also anxious to investigate how and why the hobbits came to 
be so small. When scientists discovered the hobbit remains, they thought it 
was the skeleton of a child. There was no record of human adults that were 
that small. Modern pygmies are considerably taller at about 1.4 to 1.5 meters 
(4.6 to nearly 5 feet) tall. 

"H. floresiensis presents an intriguing problem in evolutionary biology," 
Brown said. 

The most likely explanation is that, over thousands of years, the species 
became smaller because environmental conditions favored smaller body size. 
Dwarfing of mammals on islands is a well-known process and seen worldwide. 
Islands frequently provide a limited food supply, few predators, and few 
species competing for the same environmental niche. Survival would depend on 
minimizing daily energy requirements. 

But there is no absolute proof that this is what in fact happened with this 
small human. 

"While there are stone tools dated as far back as 840,000 years ago, no 
fossils of large-bodied ancestors have ever been found" on Flores, Brown 
said. "There is some possibility [Homo floresiensis] arrived on the island 
small-bodied." 

"I could not have predicted such a discovery in a million years," said 
Stringer, of London's Natural History Museum. "This find shows us how much we 
still have to learn about human evolution, particularly in Southeast Asia."