Mick Hartley

The hobbit controversy takes another turn, in favour of those who believe that they represent a new species, and against those who think they were just microencephalic freaks: 

The 3ft (one metre) tall, 30kg (65lbs) humans roamed the Indonesian island of Flores, perhaps up to 8,000 years ago.

Since the discovery, researchers have argued vehemently as to the identity of these diminutive people.

Two papers in the journal Nature now support the idea they were an entirely new species of human….

One team led by William Jungers from Stony Brook University in the US analysed remains of the Hobbit foot.

They found that, in some ways, it is incredibly human. The big toe is aligned with the others and the joints make it possible to extend the toes as the body's full weight falls on the foot, attributes not found in great apes.

But in other respects, it is incredibly primitive. It is far longer than its modern human equivalent, and equipped with a very small big toe, long, curved lateral toes, and a weight-bearing structure that resembles that of a chimpanzee.

So unless the Flores Hobbits became more primitive over time – a rather unlikely scenario – they must have branched off the human line at an even earlier date.

In another study, Eleanor Weston and Adrian Lister of London's Natural History Museum looked at fossils of several species of ancient hippos. They then compared those found on the island of Madagascar with the mainland ancestors from which they evolved.

"It could be that H. floresiensis' skull is that of a Homo erectus that has become dwarfed from living on an island, rather than being an abnormal individual or separately-evolved species, as has been suggested," said Dr Weston, a palaeontologist at the museum.

"Looking at pygmy hippos in Madagascar, which possess exceptionally small brains for their size, suggests that the same could be true for H. floresiensis , and that (it could be) the result of being isolated on the island."

The Wiki entry provides a fairly comprehensive overview of the controversy, though it hasn't yet been updated with these latest findings.