Long Feet Offer Clues to Mystery of Small Hominid Published: May 6, 2009
The extinct hominids commonly known as hobbits may have been small of body and brain, but their feet were exceptionally long, and they were flat.
Scientists, completing the first detailed analysis of the hominid’s foot bones, say the findings bolster their controversial interpretation that these individuals belonged to a primitive population distinct from modern humans that lived as recently as 17,000 years ago on the Indonesian island of Flores.
The new anatomical evidence, being reported Thursday in the journal Nature, is unlikely to solve the mystery of just where the species — formally designated Homo floresiensis — fits in human evolution. That fact even the researchers acknowledge, and some of their critics still contend that the skull and bones are nothing more than remains of modern pygmy humans deformed by genetic or pathological disorders.
The controversy erupted almost immediately after the H. floresiensis discovery was announced in 2004. The single skull was unusually small, indicating its brain was no bigger than a chimpanzee’s. It topped a body little more than three feet tall.
Now the examination of lower limbs and especially an almost complete left foot and parts of the right, the researchers reported, shows that the species walked upright, like other known hominids. There were five toes, as in other primates, but the big toe was stubby, more like a chimp’s.
Stranger still was the size of the feet — more than seven and a half inches long, out of proportion to its short lower limbs. The imbalance evoked the physiology of some African apes, but it has never before been seen in hominids.
The rest:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/science/07hobbit.html?_r=1&hp
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
