A new species of giant marabou stork (Aves: Ciconiiformes) from the Pleistocene of Liang Bua, Flores (Indonesia)
MEIJER, H. J. and DUE, R. A. (2010). Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 160: 707–724. doi: 10.1111/j.1096-3642.2010.00616.x

Giant fossil bird found on ‘hobbit’ island of Flores
BBC, 07 December 2010

Abstract:

Fossils of the genus Leptoptilos from the Pleistocene of Liang Bua, Flores, Indonesia, belong to a new species of giant marabou stork, Leptoptilos robustus sp. nov. This giant bird, estimated at 1.80 m in length, was similar in dimensions to extant Leptoptilos dubius, except for the tibiotarsus. The thick cortical bone wall of the tibiotarsus and the estimated weight of 16 kg imply a reduced flight capability. Osteological and biometric characters suggest that L. robustus is most closely related to L. dubius. An evolutionary lineage is proposed in which a volant L. dubius-like ancestor in the Middle Pleistocene evolved into the Late Pleistocene L. robustus on Flores, with a concomitant reduction of the ability to fly and an increase in body size. The large body size and terrestrial lifestyle of L. robustus are responses to an unbalanced, insular environment with abundant prey items and a lack of mammalian carnivores, and emphasize the extraordinary nature of the Homo floresiensis fauna.

Hominins on Flores, Indonesia, by one million years ago
Nature, 17 March 2010
doi:10.1038/nature08844

“Hobbits” Had Million-Year History on Island?
National Geographic, 17 March 2010

Tools found on ‘hobbit’ island
The Irish Times, 18 March 2010

‘Hobbits’ May Have Arrived in Flores Much Earlier Than Thought: Scientists
Jakarta Globe, 18 March 2010

‘Hobbit’ island’s deeper history
BBC News, 18 March 2010

Early humans colonized Indonesian island
ABC, via CBC News, 18 March 2010

Previous excavations at Mata Menge and Boa Lesa in the Soa Basin of Flores, Indonesia, recovered stone artefacts in association with fossilized remains of the large-bodied Stegodon florensis florensis. Zircon fission-track ages from these sites indicated that hominins had colonized the island by 0.88 ± 0.07 million years (Myr) ago6. Here we describe the contents, context and age of Wolo Sege, a recently discovered archaeological site in the Soa Basin that has in situ stone artefacts and that lies stratigraphically below Mata Menge and immediately above the basement breccias of the basin. We show using 40Ar/39Ar dating that an ignimbrite overlying the artefact layers at Wolo Sege was erupted 1.02 ± 0.02 Myr ago, providing a new minimum age for hominins on Flores. This predates the disappearance from the Soa Basin of ‘pygmy’ Stegodon sondaari and Geochelone spp. (giant tortoise), as evident at the nearby site of Tangi Talo, which has been dated to 0.90 ± 0.07 Myr ago10. It now seems that this extirpation or possible extinction event and the associated faunal turnover were the result of natural processes rather than the arrival of hominins9. It also appears that the volcanic and fluvio-lacustrine deposits infilling the Soa Basin may not be old enough to register the initial arrival of hominins on the island.

• Kambiz Kamrani takes a closer look at the bone analyses outlined in the study.
• The Cabinet of Wonders takes a step back to comment on the dynamics of opinion about the hobbit in Hobbits? It’s all in the wrist.
• While Kris points out that between a new species of human or deformed, the hobbit might not even be human.
• And for an overview of early human migrations through the world, TuLu Research posts a small map and timeline for your reference.
• On an afterthought, 900 ft Jesus thinks that the whole Hobbit affair should really mess with creationists’ heads.

Of course, there’s some other stuff in Southeast Asia too, like:

• Andy Brouwer muses about a stolen Buddhist sculpture from a small Angkoran temple Daun Tri.
• Still in Cambodia, Jeremie and Rita write about the Bayon, the royal temple of Angkor Thom.

In this series of weekly rojaks (published on Wednesdays) I’ll feature other sites in the blogosphere that are of related to archaeology in Southeast Asia. Got a recommendation for the next Wednesday rojak? Email me

‘Tip of the Iceberg’
A new study of a skeleton of a member of a race of three-foot-tall ‘hobbits’ who lived 12,000 years ago in Indonesia shows that they were a species of human—and that the evolutionary path to Homo sapiens has been tortuous indeed.
by Jessica Bennett

It was an astonishing discovery: the skeletal remains of a new human species that lived for eons on a remote island while man colonized the rest of the planet. Back when it was first discovered in 2003, on the tiny Indonesian island of Flores, the three-foot-tall adult female skeleton was dubbed “the hobbit,” because she—and the 11 other skeletal remains that were found like her—bore more of a resemblance to the Tolkien fantasy characters than to modern humans. The hobbit’s discovery presented evidence that as recently as 12,000 years ago another species of human may have roamed the earth and, more startling, that our evolutionary history was a lot more complex than previously thought. Many scientists were more skeptical—the bones, they said, most likely belonged to a diminutive human with physical defects: a freak.

The skeptics, however, were wrong. According to a new study published Thursday in the journal Science, the hobbit species, Homo floresiensis, or Flores Man, was indeed a new human species—an offshoot of an earlier human ancestor from Africa that somehow reached Flores and likely survived by hunting pygmy elephants and dodging Komodo dragons. The key was an analysis of the skeleton’s wrist. Matthew Tocheri, a postdoctoral anthropology fellow at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, says the hobbit bones are primitive; the wrist bones are shaped differently from those of humans and Neanderthals—and thus represent a human lineage that appeared before the modern wrist evolved, with Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. Tocheri, who has been studying wrists since 2001 and began looking at the hobbit’s wrist bones last November, spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Jessica Bennett. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What’s different about what was published back in 2004 and what you’re publishing now?
Matthew Tocheri: In 2004, when the initial reports came out, not everything had been analyzed, and they mainly focused on the skull, because that’s what’s generally most preserved in the fossil record. The reason this paper is catching such a storm is because it’s basically coming out of left field. The main hobbit specimen has three wrist bones preserved, and the results are quite clear. Within our human, great-ape family tree, we’ve got two very different types of wrists: those of humans and those of living African apes, like chimps and bonobos and gorillas. And the hobbit wrist looks just like that of the African apes.

What does this say about human evolution?
It smashes the long-cherished scientific belief that our species, Homo sapiens, has had the earth to ourselves for tens of thousands of years. It makes us realize how much more complicated our recent evolutionary history is. Before the hobbit was found, we thought that for the last 30,000 years or so we’ve been alone in the world, and that all the other earlier hominid forms that we see in the fossil record between 1 and 3 million years ago had died out. Now we know that not all of those lineages went extinct prior to 1 million years ago, and some lived all the way up to the present time.

Does it also raise even more questions about where we come from?
It doesn’t necessarily raise questions about where we come from, but it does raise many questions about where the hobbits came from. When did the hobbit’s ancestors leave Africa? How did they get all the way to Southeast Asia, and when? It looks as if this could be just the tip of the iceberg, which makes it such an exciting discovery for science. It tells us that, hey, we’ve got a lot of work to do.

What about the argument that there could be a pathological explanation to all of this?
Pathology cannot adequately explain why the shape of the hobbit’s [wrist] is just like what we’ve seen in Australopithecus, early species of Homo, and African apes. The characteristic shapes of wrist bones develop during the first trimester [of gestation], well before genes that cause growth disorders and other skeletal defects begin to express themselves. Therefore, pathology cannot explain, for example, why the hobbit’s wrist is indistinguishable from that of a normal chimpanzee.

But there are still skeptics, no?
In this debate most people have sat somewhere in the middle, waiting for more evidence. I think what this paper does is convince all those who were undecided, people who are allowing the evidence to help make up their minds, that this is really a primitive species of human and not a modern human with some form of pathology.

What was your involvement back when the hobbit was first discovered in 2003?
None at all. I was an innocent bystander until about a year ago, when by accident these wrist bones basically ended up in the same room I was in. At that point I hadn’t made up my mind about anything. But even without knowing what I now know, if you had shown me these wrists without any other contextual information, I’d have said it is the wrist of a small African ape or fossil hominin. They don’t look anything like what the bones look like in modern humans.

Flores Man’s grapefruit-size brain was two-thirds smaller than ours, a size at one time thought too small for sophisticated thought. But evidence suggests that the creatures made stone tools, tended fires and organized hunts. If that’s true, would it overturn scientific axioms about the relationship of brain size to intelligence?
There’s never been a skull that small in the genus Homo. It’s basically equivalent to a chimp or Australopithecine [an apelike hominin closely related to humans]. And that small brain size creates a problem, because we thought that once the brain size started getting big, all the other hominin species with smaller brains went extinct. But these hobbits not only made it out of Africa but across Asia to a small, remote Indonesian island. How they did it and when they did it—these are questions we now have to solve. But it definitely tells us that big brains may not be everything about the story. All the parts of the skeletal anatomy need to be explored.

What does this discovery say about Africa holding or not holding the answers to how and where we came to be? Could there be other types of people who lived?
Africa is still the most likely place of our ancestry, but that doesn’t mean that different types of hominins didn’t get out of Africa earlier than we previously thought. We’ve always known that there are other types of hominins, but the hobbits tell us that there are other types that have lived almost up until today. So all of a sudden certain places that may not have been interesting [for excavation] because their sediments weren’t old enough, now are. Hobbits are opening up a whole lot of doors, telling us that the next 50 years or so are going to be very exciting in human origins research. Is it going to make the picture complicated? Yes. But it’s going to result in good science in the long run, and it’s going to be tremendously exciting.

So what’s the next step?
To do more excavations on Flores and the islands surrounding it, as well as more detailed analyses on the fossils we have. We’ve got a whole lot of looking and studying to do.

Books about homo floresiensis:
- A New Human: The Startling Discovery and Strange Story of the “Hobbits” of Flores, Indonesia by M. Morwood and P. van Oosterzee
- Little People And a Lost World: An Anthropological Mystery by L. Goldenberg

Hobbit evidence will silence critics, scientist says
David Mark

Scientists say they have proof the so-called ‘hobbit’ from the Indonesian island of Flores is a new species, adding that the evidentiary smoking gun is all in the wrist.

The Smithsonian Institution’s Dr Matthew Tocheri, based in Washington, is the lead author of the paper published in the journal Science.

He argues that the evidence should silence those critics who suggest the hobbit, which lived until 11,000 years ago, was just a small human being, and believes more human species will soon be discovered.

“Within our human and great ape family, there are two basic kinds of wrists,” he said.

“One type we see in living chimpanzees and bonobos and gorillas. As well, we see that same wrist in early fossil hominids.”

But he says a very different type of wrist can be seen in modern humans and Neanderthals.

“When we look at the hobbit’s wrist bone, it looks just like the bones do in living African apes today, as well as earlier fossil hominids like australopithecines and Homo habilis.”

As Dr Tocheri explains, it is a different form of wrist to the modern wrist that we all share.

“When we look at the wrist evidence, modern humans and the Neanderthals are like first cousins,” he said.

“The hobbit is like a second cousin to both and then chimpanzees are like third cousins to all three.”

Smoking gun

Dr Tocheri says the evidence published could help change people’s minds on the debate that the homo floresiensis is just a modern human with a deformity.

“When I saw these wrist bones, I teamed up with my American and Australian and Indonesian colleagues, because this is a smoking gun and people need to know this – not only the scientific community, but the general public,” he said.

“People that are actually waiting for evidence to help make up their decisions, this is definitely going to change their mind.”

He says it is a fascinating idea that until quite recently, there was a separate human species living alongside modern humans.

“It is fascinating because what it is, is it’s a nice blow,” he said.

“[As] modern humans, we tend to have over-inflated egos that we’re so important and we’re here because we’re so special and so on.

“We know Neanderthals went extinct around 30,000 years ago and we’ve sort of thought, ‘Oh, Neanderthals are really similar to us anyway, but we’ve definitely been by ourselves for the last 30,000 years’.

“What the hobbit remains are now telling us is that the hominines that we thought went extinct at least a million or more years ago, here is one surviving lineage.

“We’re probably going to start finding these more primitive, isolated communities all over in the next five to 15 to 50 years in the fossil record.

“It’s going to be a tremendously exciting time for human origins research.”

Books about Homo floresiensis:
- A New Human: The Startling Discovery and Strange Story of the “Hobbits” of Flores, Indonesia by M. Morwood and P. van Oosterzee
- Little People And a Lost World: An Anthropological Mystery by L. Goldenberg

Wrist gives hobbit theory the flick
Anna Salleh

The hobbit had wrists more like those of non-human apes than those of modern humans, according to researchers who say their findings are more evidence that Homo floresiensis is a new species.

The findings reignite debate over the status of the diminutive creature found in Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores.

International researchers including Professor Mike Morwood of the University of Wollongong publish their analysis of hobbit wrist bones today in the journal Science.

“The primitive morphology of the LB1 [hobbit specimen] wrist bones confirms what other H. floresiensis traits indicate,” says Morwood.

Scientists have been debating since 2004 whether the bones are really those of a new species or a sick modern human.

Critics like Dr Alan Thorne of the Australian National University say the hobbit’s tiny skull shows it was a modern human suffering microcephaly, a condition that causes a small brain.

And he is not convinced by the latest study of three wrist bones.

He says different bones were scattered about in the cave and the researchers provide no evidence the three bones came from the same individual, let alone the individual whose skull has been so closely studied.

Thorne also argues the difference shown between the hobbit wrist bones and those of modern humans is not that great and says the variation could be part of that which occurs among the wrist bones of living modern humans.

“We certainly maintain that the head and teeth and the lower jaw are all definitely Homo sapiens,” says Thorne. “It’s very similar to some [living Aboriginal] Queenslanders.”

Another part of the body

Professor Bert Roberts, who works with Morwood at the University of Wollongong, says the wrist study is important because it uses another part of the body to provide evidence for a new species.

Morwood himself says there is now a plethora of both published and unpublished work that supports his case.

He says the stature, body proportions, brain size and structure as well as shoulder, pelvis, jaw and teeth of specimens found in the cave all suggest the hobbit is a new species that evolved in isolation on the island.

“In total these traits all indicate that the species is derived from long-term, insular evolution operating on representatives from a very early, small-bodied, small-brained, primitive proportioned hominin dispersal out of Africa,” he says.

Books about Homo floresiensis:
- A New Human: The Startling Discovery and Strange Story of the “Hobbits” of Flores, Indonesia by M. Morwood and P. van Oosterzee
- Little People And a Lost World: An Anthropological Mystery by L. Goldenberg

Homo Floresiensis skull, creative commons image by SBishop

New Research Sheds Light on “Hobbit” Smithsonian-led Study Published in Science

An international team of researchers led by the Smithsonian Institution has completed a new study on Homo floresiensis, commonly referred to as the “hobbit,” a 3-foot-tall, 18,000-year-old hominin skeleton, discovered four years ago on the Indonesian island of Flores. This study offers one of the most striking confirmations of the original interpretation of the hobbit as an island remnant of one of the oldest human migrations to Asia. The research is being published in the Sept. 21 issue of Science.

The team turned its research focus to the most complete of the 12 skeletons discovered and specifically toward three little bones from the hobbit’s left wrist. The research asserts that modern humans and our closest fossil relatives, the Neandertals, have a very differently shaped wrist in comparison to living great apes, older fossil hominins like Australopithecus (e.g., “Lucy”) and even the earliest members of the genus Homo (e.g., Homo habilis, the “handy-man”). But the hobbit’s wrist is basically indistinguishable from an African ape or early hominin-like wrist—nothing at all like that seen in modern humans and Neandertals.

The lead author of the study, Matt Tocheri, a paleoanthropologist in the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program at the National Museum of Natural History, was completely surprised when he first saw casts of the hobbit’s wrist bones. “Up until then, I had no definitive opinion regarding the hobbit debates,” said Tocheri. “But these hobbit wrist bones do not look anything like those of modern humans. They’re not even close!”

The evidence from the hobbit’s wrist is extremely important because it demonstrates further that the hobbit indeed represents a different species of human as was originally proposed by its discoverers. It is not a modern human with some sort of pathology or growth disorder. The distinctive shapes of wrist bones form during the first trimester of pregnancy while most pathologies and growth disorders do not begin to affect the skeleton until well after that time. Therefore, pathologies or growth defects cannot adequately explain why a modern human would have a wrist that was indistinguishable from that of an African ape or primitive hominin.

This evidence suggests that modern humans and Neandertals share an earlier human ancestor that the hobbits do not. Tocheri continued, “Basically, the wrist evidence tells us that modern humans and Neandertals share an evolutionary grandparent that the hobbits do not, but all three share an evolutionary great-grandparent. If you think of modern humans and Neandertals as being first cousins, then the hobbit is more like a second cousin to both.”

Caley Orr of Arizona State University and a co-author of the study said, “Wrist bones have a lot of complex anatomy, which makes them particularly useful for understanding the evolutionary relationships of living and fossil species through detailed comparative analyses.”

The international team used cutting-edge 3-D technology to compare and quantify the shapes of the different wrist bones. Many of the sophisticated 3-D techniques used for the analysis were developed during the past few years at the Partnership for Research in Spatial Modeling at Arizona State University. Tocheri and Orr both worked as graduate research assistants at PRISM, where they learned how to apply these 3-D techniques toward their research interests in paleoanthropology.

The other authors of the paper are Susan Larson (Stony Brook University, New York); Thomas Sutikna, Jatmiko, E. Wahyu Saptomo, Rokus Awe Due and Tony Djubiantono (National Research and Development Centre for Archaeology, Indonesia); Michael Morwood (University of Wollongong, Australia); and William Jungers (Stony Brook University, New York).

Various aspects of this research were funded in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Leakey Foundation, the Australian Research Council, the National Geographic Society, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Smithsonian’s Fellowship Program and the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program.

Related Books about Homo floresiensis:
- A New Human: The Startling Discovery and Strange Story of the “Hobbits” of Flores, Indonesia by M. Morwood and P. van Oosterzee
- Little People And a Lost World: An Anthropological Mystery by L. Goldenberg

Choosing One’s Relatives

The discovery of a new hominin species in human ancestry is always exciting, never more so than when it is completely unexpected. And certainly no one anticipated that the fossil remains of such a species would be found in 2003 in Liang Bua, a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. But that year a team of archaeologists, anthropologists and geologists from Australia and Indonesia working at Liang Bua uncovered the bonesof a tiny woman, whom they eventually concluded was a hominin of a new species, Homo floresiensis. That bold claim has ignited considerable controversy among paleo-anthropologists.

Now one of the members of the team that found the specimen, Mike Morwood, has written a book titled A New Human, with science writer Penny van Oosterzee as coauthor. Their fascinating account of how the large-scale, multidisciplinary excavation was set up and run shows just how such an investigation should be conducted. They cover everything: the preliminary groundwork to find out who has to be approached to get permissions, with all the politics and administrative matters that are an unavoidable adjunct to such forms of scientific inquiry; the actual business of excavation and the dating of the deposit; and finally, the process of publishing a description of the fossils and their context. Anyone thinking of undertaking such a project would do well to consult this book.

…

Read the full review of “A New Human: The Startling Discovery and Strange Story of the “Hobbits” of Flores, Indonesia” from American Scientist.

More books about Homo floresiensis, aka The Hobbit:
- A New Human: The Startling Discovery and Strange Story of the “Hobbits” of Flores, Indonesia by M. Morwood and P. van Oosterzee
- Little People And a Lost World: An Anthropological Mystery by L. Goldenberg