Hobbit" Human Ancestor Found in Asia - National Geographic News

[Ivan Seeking]

Please feel free to post any potentially related legends or myths in the S&D thread. It is appropriate there to discuss any anecdotal evidence.
A History of Hobbits?
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=50855

 

[Ivan Seeking]

...LB1 stood at least a meter tall and displays primitive-looking skeletal traits from head to toe, Jungers says. H. floresiensis must have evolved from a species that was older, smaller and anatomically more primitive than Asian H. erectus, perhaps 2.4-million-year-old Homo habilis in Africa, Jungers proposes. An evolutionary transition from H. habilis to hobbits would have required little or no reduction in body size, in his view.

This proposal clashes with earlier interpretations of other hobbit fossils, also from the Indonesian island of Flores, that suggest a large-bodied H. erectus population from southeastern Asia evolved into H. floresiensis. H. erectus lived in southeastern Asia by 90,000 years ago, when hobbits first inhabited Flores. And other animals are known to have evolved into small species on islands, a process known as island dwarfing...

http://www.usnews.com/articles/scie...ot-hippo-skulls-deepen-ancestral-mystery.html

 

[baywax]

And other animals are known to have evolved into small species on islands, a process known as island dwarfing...

Komodo Dragon not included.

http://skew.dailyskew.com/uploaded_images/komodo-dragon-731086.jpg

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Komodo Dragon not included.

http://skew.dailyskew.com/uploaded_images/komodo-dragon-731086.jpg

[/URL]

Apparently Komodo dragons were twice their current size in the day of the hobbit.

 

[Phrak]

i'd thought that subsequent cranial cavity evidence supported the theory that the specimen was human. Or maybe I'm recalling a different investigation.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

You might want to view the latest pbs special linked, if you haven't already. As I understand it, in order to be human they would have had an entire colony of microcephalics living for thousands of years. This is apparently extremely unlikely. Much of the original controvesy was based on only one skeleton. There are other distinctive features cited that suggest a parallel species, rather than mutant humans.

 

[baywax]

Apparently Komodo dragons were twice their current size in the day of the hobbit.

Holy §•ø©.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Holy §•ø©.

No kidding! I'm not sure where I heard that. It was in one of the sources linked earlier in this thread, but this seems to addess the same subject.

The Biogeography of the Komodo Dragon...

Evolution:
They share a common past with dinosaurs but are not direct descendants. Both dinosaurs and monitor lizards belong to the subclass Diapsida (Ciofi, 1999). The earliest fossils from this subclass go back to the late Carboniferous period, about 300 million years ago. Monitor lizards are related to Lepidsauria which emerged from Diapsida, about 250 million years ago at the end of the Paleozoic era. About 100 million years ago, during the Cretaceous era, a species related to contemporary varanids appear in the fossil records of central Asia. Marine lizards from this species went extinct, along with dinosaurs, about 65 million years ago. During the Eocene, 50 million years ago, land monitors spread throughout Europe and South Asia. The Varanus genus appeared and evolved about 40 and 25 million years ago in Asia. Varanids made it to Australia about 15 million years ago when Australia collided with southeast Asia. Then 2 million years later a second lineage differentiated and moved throughout Australia and the Indonesian archipelago when the two were much closer. Lower sea levels allowed the dragons to reach their destination. Varanus komodoensis differentiated from its earliest Australian relative about 4 million years ago (Ciofi, 1999). Komodos migrated to the islands of Flores, Rinca and Gila Motang, which were joined about 10,000 years ago. The island of Komodo joined the other islands around 20,000 years ago during the last Ice Age.

Fossil evidence supports the idea that Komodo dragons may be relics of a larger distribution, stretching as far as the eastern portion of Flores to Timor. Fossils from pygmy elephants, stegodont, found on both Timor and Flores suggest that the two islands may have been close enough to allow migration during the Pleistocene era. The existence of large mammals provided an adequate supply of food to feed lizards as large as Komodo dragons and possibly larger. Megalania prisca, a varanid, could have reached lengths up to 23 feet and weighed up to a ton due to the existence of stegodonts or pygmy elephants (Diamond, 1992). These enormous varanids, that have been extinct for 25,000 years, may explain how Komodo dragons evolved to be such large carnivores in an ecosystem that has a limited amount of resources...

http://www.sfsu.edu/~geog/bholzman/courses/316projects/komodo.htm