For Darwin Day (Feb 12th), the Canberra Skeptics arranged a talk by paleoanthropologist Colin Groves at the National Museum of Australia on the subject of Homo floresiensis, the “Hobbit”. It’s clearly a popular subject; the small lecture theatre was filled to capacity with a few hundred people.
Some scientists have disputed the idea that floresiensis is a new species, suggesting instead that the skeleton is a pathological modern human - Maciej Henneberg, for one, has claimed that it closely resembles a 4000-year-old microcephalic skull found on Crete. Groves showed pictures of that skull and compared it to the hobbit. They did not look very similar to my unqualified judgement, nor, apparently, to the judgement of many qualified scientists. The hobbit femur also has differences from that of any other hominid, and the pelvis flares more than in H. sapiens or H. erectus.
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Went to see Peter Brown give a talk a few weeks back in London. He was unimpressed, to say the least, about the various claims of messers Jakob and Henneberg.
He also showed us some as yet unpublished material. He asked us not to discuss it outside of the room, all rather cloak and dagger but since this is a popular blog I’d best not, and things are sure to get much more interesting rather soon (if not any clearer). Just to tantalise, there may be a movement away from H.erectus.……
Update