Sneaky Little Hobbitses!

The hobbit skeleton is now on public display! It's being shown at Stony Brook University in Long Island, where they held a conference last week. Scientists are now saying there's a consensus among experts now that Homo Floresiensis was indeed a distinct species, according to an article in today's Times.

Back in 2003, when a team of paleoanthropologists were looking for evidence of human migration from Asia to Indonesia they discovered the remains of seven skeletons of hominids about 3 feet in height. The skeletons ranged from possibly 74,000 to 13,000 years old.

Since then, there's been a bit of back and forth between scientists who've found the evidence conclusive and others who say they've just been reading too much J.R.R. Tolkein. Here's a bit of the evidence on both sides:

For:

-Ridiculously short: the most complete skeleton, that of a 30 yr. old female, is 3'6" and a second skeleton is estimated to be 3'7". They were shorter than even the smallest human populations, such as the African pygmies which aveaged 4'11".

-Small brains: Homo Erectus had more than double the brains of these guys. But the hobbits didn't let that get in the way of developing Stone Age tools for themselves. In fact, they hunted the local dwarf Stegodons. So basically there were mini-cavemen using mini-spears to hunt mini-mammoths in Indonesia. That's fucking cool.

-Different bones and teeth: they have a different shoulder stucture, no chin, disproportionately wide leg bones and their wrists' bones are wedge-shaped, as opposed to square. Their premolars are larger, crowns and roots are different and their jaws are lower.

-Local myths of the Ebu Gogo, modern day hobbits who steal babies from nearby villages and eat them. Perhaps calling them "gollums" might be more fair. MY! PRECIOUS!

-As recently as 2003, hobbits were caught on film saving Middle-Earth.

Against:

-You guys are high, these are just the bones of a bunch of really retarded short people.