New species of hominin from Luzon
The online journal Sapiens invited me to write up my thoughts about the announcement of Homo luzonensis yesterday. I do have more to say about this cool disc...
The online journal Sapiens invited me to write up my thoughts about the announcement of Homo luzonensis yesterday. I do have more to say about this cool disc...
Last summer I published a piece on Medium about the possible ancient existence of hominins on Luzon: “This is where scientists may find the next hobbits”.
In light of this week’s paper by Ingicco and colleagues showing evidence of 700,000-year-old human activity from Kalinga, on Luzon, I’ve been doing a little ...
In the South China Morning Post, a great story featuring Indonesian archaeologist Emanuel “Wahyu” Saptomo: “Indonesian archaeologist recalls Flores ‘hobbit’ ...
Bernard Wood’s research group has a new paper on brain size evolution in hominins, led by Andrew Du in Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B: “Pattern a...
A nice article by Anna Goldfield in Sapiens today profiles the work of zooarchaeologist Grace Veach, who is examining the remains of rodents in Liang Bua Cav...
Paige Madison pointed me today to her post from 2015 recounting the discovery of the LB1 skeleton, from Liang Bua, Flores: “The Moment the Hobbit was Discove...
Ewen Callaway reports on a talk at the European Society for Human Evolution meeting, presenting new human teeth from the ongoing Liang Bua archaeological wor...
I was really excited yesterday to read about the work of Gerrit van den Bergh and colleagues at Mata Menge, where they have uncovered hominin fossil remains ...
Carl Zimmer’s article on “Foxes That Endure Despite a Lack of Genetic Diversity” is interesting and useful:
Thomas Sutikna and colleagues report a significant revision to the stratigraphy of Liang Bua cave, which changes the geological age estimates attributed to t...
Kate Wong notes the death of Mike Morwood, archaeologist, rock art expert, and co-discoverer of the Liang Bua people commonly known as the “hobbits”:
The Guardian reports, “Hobbit banned as title of lecture on prehistoric ‘hobbit’”. The event in question was organized at Victoria University in New Zealand ...
In a world, lost before time, lived an ancient race of tiny people… “‘Hobbit’ Lawyers Threaten ‘Age of the Hobbits’ Movie (Exclusive)”.
Re: Denisova at high coverage”
I have to point to Robert Krulwich’s blog post, “Killer Storks Eat Human Babies”, about the giant extinct Maribou stork relatives of Flores.
Every so often, a reader asks me if I know any new rumors about DNA sampling of “Homo floresiensis”. I’m not holding out much hope for success given the trop...
A single foot bone from a cave isn’t ordinarily very remarkable. But when it’s a funny-looking foot bone from a 67,000-year-old site on an island, that gets ...
Today’s sketchbook:
In this week’s copy of Nature, Johannes Krause and colleagues Krause:Denisova:2010 report on the complete mitochondrial sequence of a pinky bone from Denisov...
A new paper is pushing back the time of initial occupation of Flores by hominins to at least 1.0 million years ago. Adam Brumm and colleagues (2010) are repo...
A reader writes to let me know that the talks from the Stony Brook symposium on the Flores hominids are now available for streaming. I haven’t had a chance t...
Elizabeth Culotta reports from the Stony Brook hobbitrama:
A reader passes this along:
I saw this press release from Stony Brook today:
Jungers and colleagues (in press) provide a medium-length description of the lower limb remains from Liang Bua cave. In a second paper with much overlap of a...
I’m sitting down in front of the TV to live-blog the Nova episode on the Flores fossils, “Alien from Earth.” It has the typical Nova high production values. ...
The web site for the Hobbit episode of Nova has opened. It let’s you e-mail questions for Mike Morwood, features some graphics with endocast scans and some v...
On November 11, NOVA will present a new hour-long documentary on the hobbits, briefly described at the PBS website:
Note: I wrote this post in 2005. We have learned much since then about the context of the Liang Bua fossils and archaeological record. These have changed the...
Note: I wrote this post in 2005. More recent posts have up to date information about Homo floresiensis and the Liang Bua stone artifacts.
Note: I wrote this post the day that the papers describing Homo floresiensis and its context in Liang Bua cave came out in Nature in 2004. From the perspecti...