THE battle over the 鈥渉obbit鈥� that lived 18,000 years ago on the Indonesian island of Flores is taking on epic proportions worthy of The Lord of the Rings.
On one side is Robert Martin of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, who says the existence of a species of small-brained dwarf human is a fantasy. Instead, he argues, the fossil is merely a stone-age human with a mild form of microcephaly, a disease which stunts brain development and is associated with small stature. And he says the stone tools found at the site were made by regular Homo sapiens (Anatomical Record, DOI: 10.1002/ar.a.20394).
Recently, however, Colin Groves of the Australian National University, Canberra, argued that Homo floresiensis has the wrong shape of skull for a human with microcephaly and is therefore a separate species (Journal of Human Evolution, vol 51, p 360). 鈥淭here鈥檚 no sign of anything but H. floresiensis on Flores at the end of the Pleistocene,鈥� he says.
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Dean Falk of Florida State University, Tallahassee, seems to agree 鈥� according to her research the skull lacks features shared by 10 modern humans with microcephaly. 鈥淭he brain is a combination of features I鈥檝e never seen in any other primate.鈥�
Further studies of the fossil are unlikely to resolve the argument without new material, says Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London. 鈥淲e need a second skull to see what the variation is.鈥� Only then will we know if the hobbit with the chimp-sized brain was one of a kind or belonged to an unexpected branch of the human tree.
