Hobbit controversy settled?

R. PRASAD
12 February 2009
The Hindu, (c) 2009 Kasturi & Sons Ltd

Ever since the discovery of the three-foot tall, 18,000-year-old hominid fossil Homo floresiensis on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, the scientific community is split on the issue of whether it is a new homo species.

The controversy is akin to what was seen in the case of Australopithecus and Homo erectus.

Recent death
The Homo fossil, nicknamed ‘Hobbit’ due to its diminutive size and strikingly large feet, died out some 13,000 years ago. Hobbits are considered to be descendents of a long-extinct ancestor of modern humans, the Homo erectus.

If they were indeed separate species, modern-day humans were living at the same time as Hobbits.

The last five years has seen several papers published in many leading journals either supporting or vehemently denying it being a separate Homo species.

The main contentious issue has been the skull. A skull can provide researchers important information about the evolutionary relationships with other fossil species.

The size of the Hobbit’s skull is small. The skull, with a 400 cubic cm size, is about the same as that of a chimp. Scientists who believed that it was not a new species ascribed the small size to dwarfism or a kind of brain disorder — microcephaly.

Microcephaly results in abnormal growth of the brain that causes the cranium to be much smaller. Dean Falk of Florida State University and others studied ten normal humans, nine microcephalics, one dwarf and the Hobbit using CT scans.
The evidences

Their study published in 2007 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that Hobbit was a new species.

A study published in the Journal of Human Evolution this year has come out with more evidence supporting the idea that Hobbit is indeed a new species.

Apart from studying the size of the skull, scientists from Stony Brook University and the University of Minnesota also looked at the shape and asymmetry.

Studying the 3D images of other hominin species and modern humans and apes, they refuted the idea that Hobbit was not a new species.

The asymmetry of the skulls — the difference between the left and right side of the skull was not much. Modern humans with microcephaly would have very high level of asymmetry. However, the last word is not out yet, and the controversy may continue for some more time.