…. I’m just not very well.
Scientists around the world are probably walking around with long faces now that their earth shattering discovery is in serious doubt.
THE discovery of a previously unknown species of prehistoric human – nicknamed the Hobbit – may not be as extraordinary as first thought, with a group of scientists arguing the fossil remains are in fact those of a deformed modern man.
According to this article at news.com.au, the remains were not what they may have immediately thought. Rather than a new species, it is claimed that it was just a very sick examplae of modern man.
The find, hailed as the most significant archaelogical discovery in a century when it was revealed by Australian and Indonesian scientists last month, promised to rewrite the history of humankind – the metre-tall, ape-like being lived as recently as 11,000 BC, up to 40,000 years after modern humans, or homo sapiens, appeared.
But according to a report in the reputable Science magazine, a small but vocal group of scientists argues the skeleton dubbed homo floresiensis is a modern human with the disease microcephaly – a deformity characterised by a small brain and head.
“They jumped the gun,” paleopathologist Maciej Henneberg of the University of Adelaide says.
I guess it’ll give the scientists from both sides something to argue over for a few years.
Posted by Rodney Olsen
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