"I'd be very surprised if the hobbits didn't fall down there."
So says Mike Morwood about the discovery (reported in The Australian) of a newfound chamber behind and beneath Liang Bua cave:
The unexpected discovery of a chamber in the Flores island cave was made last year by an Australian-Indonesian team - led by ANU paleoclimatologist Mike Gagan - while they were investigating ancient climates.
An expert caver assisting in sample retrieval abseiled down a 23m-long sinkhole, inaccessible to the original team, at the back of Liang Bua Cave and found the chamber.
...
Dr Gagan said he and his Indonesian colleagues surveyed just the top 5cm of a 5m-deep layer of mud in the 430sqm cavern. "Imagine what's below," he said. "It might have been a split-level home for hobbits."
That sounds more like something out of A Very Brady Christmas than the Mines of Moria...
This creates two teams searching for hobbit bones at Liang Bua:
Dr Gagan's team will return to the cave in June, with additional members, including Alan Cooper, an expert in ancient DNA with Adelaide University, and CSIRO mammalogist Ken Aplin. Professor Morwood's group will also return to Liang Bua this year, after previously being denied access by Indonesian officials.
Both groups will continue to collaborate with the Indonesian National Research Centre for Archaeology. Dr Gagan's group is also working with the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.
That should be interesting. Now that they're going back to work, I wonder if we will hear more about the rumored hair in the strata. (via Afarensis).
- 4/24/2008
- Peter Brown refutes Flores filling claim
- 4/15/2008
- Was Homo floresiensis the tooth fairy?
- 3/6/2008
- Hobbit cretin FAQ
- 10/9/2007
- Tools of the hobbits
- 8/10/2007
- The Liang Bua report
- 8/5/2007
- A hobbit Internationale
- 7/3/2007
- Another diagnosis for a hobbit
- 5/12/2007
- Island hopping
- 4/26/2007
- A guide to fantasy science
- 4/3/2007
- Floresiensis presentations
- 2/7/2007
- Size, shape, and microcephaly
- 1/30/2007
- "I'd be very surprised if the hobbits didn't fall down there."
- 1/29/2007
- Another brain scan hobbit paper coming
- 8/23/2006
- Is this the end for Homo floresiensis?
- 7/20/2006
- Pygmoid, Australopithecus, Homo, yada yada...
- 6/22/2006
- Narrowing down Flores microcephaly
- 6/1/2006
- Mata Menge stone tools
- 5/26/2006
- Cryptomundo hobbit article
- 5/18/2006
- Martin versus Falk on microcephaly
- Hobbit news from Stony Brook
- 3/22/2006
- Kate Wong hobbit update 2
- 3/15/2006
- Kate Wong hobbit update 1
- 3/9/2006
- Wong Flores update
- 3/4/2006
- "The Mystery of the Human Hobbit"
- 12/8/2005
- Is that a Jethro Tull song?
- 12/7/2005
- Give those hobbits a Vegemite sandwich
- 10/14/2005
- If it weren't for those meddling kids...
- From one microcephalic to twenty
- 10/13/2005
- New CT study: LB1 "nearly identical" to microcephalic
- 10/11/2005
- Flores update, October 2005
- News trickling about Liang Bua
- 9/23/2005
- Hobbit backlash building
- 9/16/2005
- Flores interviews on NOVA scienceNOW
- 6/24/2005
- Stalking the wild ebu gogo
- 6/13/2005
- Questioning the Flores dwarf Stegodon remains
- 6/7/2005
- Back to Rampasasa
- 5/4/2005
- Homo floresiensis on 60 minutes
- 4/30/2005
- The Rampasasa Pygmy Somatology Expedition
- 4/9/2005
- Retractions dept.
- 3/26/2005
- A show of "no support"
- 3/22/2005
- Have the hobbits been protsched?
- 3/14/2005
- Homo floresiensis on National Geographic Explorer
- 3/7/2005
- The brain of the hobbit
- 2/21/2005
- You heard it here first :: hobbits are australopithecines!
- 2/18/2005
- Can somebody find these hobbits a mommy?
- 1/16/2005
- The Liang Bua debate, continued
- 1/5/2005
- The Flores find :: more thoughts on Liang Bua
- 11/1/2004
- Is Liang Bua pathological :: update
- 10/31/2004
- Liang Bua :: an australopithecine from Flores?
John Hawks Department of Anthropology
University of Wisconsin—Madison
Copyright © 2007 John Hawks