Remember those funny little Flores Hobbits? Carl Zimmer has followed the story like a master tracker over the years. In any case, Wrist bones bolster hobbit status:
Painstaking study of Homo floresiensis wrist bones shows that their wrists were far more primitive than ours -- suggesting that they were evolutionarily distinct from modern humans. The hobbits' wrists are so primitive-looking, say the researchers, that tracing our shared heritage would involve going back millions of years, perhaps to very birth of the genus Homo in Africa.
I wonder if John Hawks might comment soon (I recall years ago he was convinced the Hobbits were pathological, but no word for a while). Update:'Little People' of Indonesia Seem to Be Distinct Tribe:
But Robert B. Eckhardt, a professor of developmental genetics at Pennsylvania State University and one of several critics of the new-species designation, took issue with the new research. He said the wrist study appeared "to be an exercise in the presentation of misleading ideas in an obfuscatory manner." Dr. Eckhardt noted, in particular, that there is "a lot of variation in the form of wrist bones." Some variations, he said, are normal and others occur "as the result of various pathologies, such as from injuries or from anomalies of development."
I've not no idea is this is a classic "Earth sphere, views differ." but what does "a lot of variation in the form of wrist bones" mean? Anyone know how morphometrics quantifies the variance (e.g., standard deviation units?). I'm not interested in whether the Flores Hobbits are a new species, only the phylogenetic implications. Update II: The paper itself, The Primitive Wrist of Homo floresiensis and Its Implications for Hominin Evolution.
