Monday, October 02, 2006

Australian researchers back hobbit claims





In a new paper, ANU researchers reject claims that the skeleton of a hobbit-like species was simply a very short human with a rare brain disease.

ANU Professor Colin Groves says after analysing the evidence, he has no doubt the discovery represents a new species of human.

"What is particularly interesting about it is it survived in isolation through those two-million-years or so in eastern Indonesia and its existence was quite unsuspected until very recently," he said.

Professor Groves says the evidence speaks for itself.

"Aspects of the shape of the skull are completely outside modern humans," he said.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Considering the myopic ballyhoo that greeted the recent, and imo, preposterous suggestions that the hobbits were merely some sort of diseased mini-human, why I am I not surprised to see that this latest release seems to have been taken up by no-one else, so far at least. Looks as if there's still some way to go before the books get re-written, but hopefully it won't be too long before the publication of Prof. Mike Morwood's book on the subject, I think towards the end of this year. btw, glad you're over you're recent brush with modern medicine, hope you're feeling better etc.