Natural Science Forum / Biology / Paleontology / May 2005

Carl Zimmer writes of a village about 1km from where the bones were found:

http://www.corante.com/loom/archives/2005/04/29/hobbits_alive.php
http://www.corante.com/loom/archives/cat_hobbits_homo_floresiensis.html

 Rampasasa, made up of 77 families. About 80% of the people were
 pygmies. They measured 10 people who were a bit taller, with a height
 of 155 cm and 2 measuring 160 cm. Homo floresiensis was 130 cm. The
 researchers claim that these tall villagers got some extra height from
 having married non-pygmies from surrounding villages.

He gives a translation of the article in Kompas:

 http://www.kompas.com/kompas-cetak/0504/28/humaniora/1714417.htm

So are the bones of modern humans who have evolved as "pygmies" - or are
they of a "new species"?   Is is possible that a branch of hominid or
early homo sapiens evolved to be much smaller than modern humans, and
survive today, sometimes interbreeding with modern humans.

I have no detailed knowledge of what genetic changes would be required
to cause two lines of mammals to be incapable of producing fertile
offspring, but I figure it would be something like a differing number of
chromosomes, or some major structural changes in the genome.  It
wouldn't surprise me if a great deal of divergent evolution could take
place over hundreds of thousands of years without either group diverging
sufficiently to make them genetically incapable of having fertile offspring.

 - Robin Whittle

[Fowarded from 'Evolutionary Psychology' by Robert Karl Stonjek]