The Link

[Tao_Equus]

Oh my a museum not interested in making a profit?? I've not been around many of those... Even the Smithsonian would love to break even.

Not sure about over there but over here the big museums would not even dream of being profitable.

Now maybe I'll rephrase, which preoconceived notions would you think one would have to cause you to make the assertion?

Then I can easily tell you if they are amongst my myriad of baggage.

Not in 47 million years will you get me trying to decipher your mind Wil!! For one I respect you too much to try and do that based on what I have read here and two I did not really think you had any secret preconceptions....was just a teaser. But then again..... I do seem to have touched a nerve

 

[Tao_Equus]

What really has been a fascinating find to me is the find in Indonesia of the "hobbit" humans-- that has implications for how the human brain works and assumptions about brain size as opposed to neurological wiring for higher cognitive functioning.

I have been following this story. As far as I am concerned this 'hobbit' is nothing more than a normal but severely diseased human being.

 

[path_of_one]

Except they have found more than one skeleton's bits/pieces, from what I understand. Thus, the proposition would be that there were an entire group of diseased/disabled people... who still managed to make stone tools and hunt. Unlikely. The controversy is ongoing and very interesting.

 

[Tao_Equus]

Except they have found more than one skeleton's bits/pieces, from what I understand. Thus, the proposition would be that there were an entire group of diseased/disabled people... who still managed to make stone tools and hunt. Unlikely. The controversy is ongoing and very interesting.

They have yet microcephaly is a genetic trait and you would expect to see it in more than one specimen. The original claim however was based on a single female skeleton.
That said I just revisited the evidence and it seems if I am to accept the evidence for the fossil on which this thread centres as hinging on a foot bone I also have to accept similar evidence relating to the Flores Hobbit. There are wrist, foot and shoulder differences that suggest it has a distinct lineage from Australopithecus that diverged from us at least 800,000 years ago. Though the leading advocate of the microcephaly argument Robert Martin, a primatologist at the Field Museum in Chicago, suggests that such finding are consistent with the range of defects found in the anatomy of those affected by microcephaly.
The jury is still out, and yes...very interesting.

 

[seattlegal]

They have yet microcephaly is a genetic trait and you would expect to see it in more than one specimen. The original claim however was based on a single female skeleton.
That said I just revisited the evidence and it seems if I am to accept the evidence for the fossil on which this thread centres as hinging on a foot bone I also have to accept similar evidence relating to the Flores Hobbit. There are wrist, foot and shoulder differences that suggest it has a distinct lineage from Australopithecus that diverged from us at least 800,000 years ago. Though the leading advocate of the microcephaly argument Robert Martin, a primatologist at the Field Museum in Chicago, suggests that such finding are consistent with the range of defects found in the anatomy of those affected by microcephaly.
The jury is still out, and yes...very interesting.

Yep, according to Wiki, Ida is the only known fossil of this species.