1 Meter Tall 'Little People' of Indonesia Were Not Human

More research suggests that the "little people," the one-meter tall humans whose bones were discovered on the island of Flores, Indonesia in 2004, were a distinct species and not modern humans with a medical disorder.

The little people's wrist bones are much more like those of an ape than a human, according to Smithsonian Institution anthropologist Matthew Tocheri and his colleagues. Their findings, published today in the journal Science, argue that this "hobbit" species, (local indonesians call them Ebo gogo, for they move like staggery granny) split off at least 800,000 years ago from the evolutionary branch that led to humans.

From the New York Times:

In the continuing debate over the origin of the extinct “little people” of Indonesia, a team of scientists says it has found evidence in three wrist bones that these people were members of a distinct species rather than humans with a physical disorder.

The researchers describe the new findings in a report published on Friday in the journal Science. Critics disputed the research, saying it did not present clear evidence for the existence of a separate species, known as Homo floresiensis.

The discovery, in a cave on the island of Flores, of skeletal remains of the diminutive people with unusually small heads was a sensation when it was announced three years ago. Some scientists contended that these were more likely to be modern humans who suffered a developmental disorder that causes the head and brain to be much smaller than average.

In the new study, scientists led by Matthew W. Tocheri, an anthropologist of human origins at the Smithsonian Institution, examined wrist bones from the skeletons and found them to be primitive and shaped differently than the wrist bones of modern humans. For example, the trapezoid bone connected to the index finger was wedge-shaped, not boot-shaped, as in humans. In fact, the scientists said these wrist bones were closer in shape to those of apes.

This evidence, the scientists wrote, indicated that the individuals were not modern humans “with an undiagnosed pathology or growth defect.” Rather, they represented a species that descended from an ancestor that branched off from the human lineage by at least 800,000 years ago, the scientists concluded.

The specimens from the Flores cave lived at various times from 120,000 to 10,000 years ago.

Dr. Tocheri and his colleagues said that the distinct species emerged from ancestors “that migrated out of Africa before the evolution of the shared, derived wrist morphology that is characteristic of modern humans, Neanderthals and their last common ancestor.”

But Robert B. Eckhardt, a professor of developmental genetics at Pennsylvania State University and one of several critics of the new-species designation, took issue with the new research. He said the wrist study appeared “to be an exercise in the presentation of misleading ideas in an obfuscatory manner.”

Dr. Eckhardt noted, in particular, that there is “a lot of variation in the form of wrist bones.” Some variations, he said, are normal and others occur “as the result of various pathologies, such as from injuries or from anomalies of development.”

Source: Boingboing, NYTimes