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...
All posts tagged with Homo floresiensis
How capable were early hominins of crossing water?
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”.
Looking at Luzon hominins, from the perspective of 1985
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 ...
A new perspective on Homo floresiensis from one of the discoverers
In the South China Morning Post, a great story featuring Indonesian archaeologist Emanuel “Wahyu” Saptomo: “Indonesian archaeologist recalls Flores ‘hobbit’ ...
Human brain evolution looks gradual. If you ignore enough data…
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...
Considering rodent eating by the Flores hominins
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...
Link: The discovery story of the LB1 skeleton
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...
Link: Modern human teeth from Liang Bua, Flores
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...
Hominin remains from Mata Menge, Flores
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 ...
Genetic flatlining of island foxes
Carl Zimmer’s article on “Foxes That Endure Despite a Lack of Genetic Diversity” is interesting and useful:
What the revised Liang Bua chronology leaves unanswered
Thomas Sutikna and colleagues report a significant revision to the stratigraphy of Liang Bua cave, which changes the geological age estimates attributed to t...
Mike Morwood obituary
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”:
Hobbits hobbled
The Guardian reports, “Hobbit banned as title of lecture on prehistoric ‘hobbit’”. The event in question was organized at Victoria University in New Zealand ...
When Hollywood and paleoanthropology intersect
In a world, lost before time, lived an ancient race of tiny people… “‘Hobbit’ Lawyers Threaten ‘Age of the Hobbits’ Movie (Exclusive)”.
Mailbag: Denisova and the hobbit
Re: Denisova at high coverage”
Storkicide
I have to point to Robert Krulwich’s blog post, “Killer Storks Eat Human Babies”, about the giant extinct Maribou stork relatives of Flores.
Hobbit DNA hunt
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 foot short
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 ...
Sketchbook
Today’s sketchbook:
The Denisova mtDNA sequence: The X-Woman
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...
Earlier arrival of stone tools on Flores
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...
Stony Brook Flores symposium online
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...
From Flores to Stony Brook
Elizabeth Culotta reports from the Stony Brook hobbitrama:
Flores para los muertos
A reader passes this along:
Well, I guess that answers who the "top minds" are…
I saw this press release from Stony Brook today:
The forelimb and hindlimb remains from Liang Bua cave
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...
The Hobbit Nova: "Alien from Earth"
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. ...
Essay on the island rule
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...
Hobbit Nova coming November 11
On November 11, NOVA will present a new hour-long documentary on the hobbits, briefly described at the PBS website:
The Liang Bua debate, continued
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...
The Flores find: more thoughts on Liang Bua
Note: I wrote this post in 2005. More recent posts have up to date information about Homo floresiensis and the Liang Bua stone artifacts.
Liang Bua: an australopithecine from Flores?
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...