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Thursday, 13 October 2005
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David Pescovitz:
A scientific team led by the University of New England in Australia has
discovered parts of at least nine Homo Floresiensis skeletons. The
meter-tall people lived on the Indonesian island of Flores as recently
as 18,000 years ago. Last year, one partial skeleton was found and Homo
Floresiensis was quickly determined to be Boing Boing's long-lost
mascot. (Previous posts here, here, and here.) From the BBC News:
"The finds further demonstrate that (the first skeleton found) is not
just an aberrant or pathological individual but is representative of a
long-term population," they write in Nature.
The team contends that Homo floresiensis, with its 380-cubic-cm-sized
brain, is the outcome of a phenomenon known as endemic or island
dwarfing.
This sees isolated species, released from the pressures of
predation but constrained by limited resources, evolving either smaller
or larger forms than would otherwise be the case.
Link [Boing Boing]
10:17:10 PM 
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© Copyright 2005 Peter Nixon.
Last update: 1/11/05; 10:06:26 PM.
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