Jan. 30, 2007 — New evidence supports the theory that a 18,000-year old "Hobbit" skeleton unearthed in Indonesia was a new species closely related to Homo sapiens, but not human, say researchers.
Some scientists had theorized that the skeletal remains found on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003 belonged to a pygmy or a microcephalic — a human with an abormally small skull.
But researchers from Florida State University who examined a three-dimensional computer reconstruction of the small but well-formed brain of the hominid, "classified it with normal humans." The skull, they found, did not represent an abnormal human skull but that of a human-like species whose growth was on a smaller scale.
"We have answered the people who contend that the Hobbit is a microcephalic," said world-renowned paleoneurologist Dean Falk, who is also chairwoman of Florida State University's anthropology department, which conducted the research with Indonesia's Center for Archaeology along with other international partners.
Her team's study of both normal and microcephalic human brains is published in Monday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The computer model reproduced the surface of the brain, including its shape, grooves and vessels, revealing what Falk described as a "highly evolved brain."
The skeleton came to be known as "the Hobbit" after the diminuitive characters in J.R.R. Tolkien's classic "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
