Drawf Human Species discovered....

[RickM]

Sounds like a headline off the cover of the "Star". This stuff really fascinates me. Hope to get more detail soon.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=624&ncid=624&e=3&u=/ap/20041027/ap_on_sc/dwarf_cavewoman

[motion]

Fascinating... makes you wonder how much we really know about ourselves.

[RickM]

Apparently very little.

There was an interesting show on Discovery (?) the other night. They spoke of a Mega volcanic eruption that may have wiped out seven out of the eight human species that existed on earth at the time (But what about the Drawf species???). I think it was called the population bottleneck. They coupled the geological finding with evidence from modern human's myocardial DNA...where our specie's history is preserved. They guess that when this bottleneck occured there were as few as 1000 humans left on earth!!!!

[kach22i]

I was just about to post this, you beat me to it.

Scientists Find Prehistoric Dwarf Skeleton
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041027/ap_on_sc/dwarf_cavewoman_2
By JOSEPH B. VERRENGIA, AP Science Writer
In a breathtaking discovery, scientists working on a remote Indonesian island say they have uncovered the bones of a human dwarf species marooned for eons while modern man rapidly colonized the rest of the planet. …………………………………………………….This hobbit-sized creature appears to have lived as recently as 18,000 years ago on the island of Flores, a kind of tropical Lost World populated by giant lizards and miniature elephants.


Note: If this does not open up the discussion to; if small is possible, then why not big (as in big foot), then what will?

Big Foot in 2004, Drawf woman as VP.

[cegerer]

Fascinating stuff!

"Millenia ago, Flores was a kind of a looking-glass world, a real-life Middle-earth inhabited by a menagerie of fantastical creatures like giant tortoises, elephants as small as ponies and rats as big as hunting dogs.

It even had a dragon, although they were giant lizards like today's carnivorous Komodo dragons rather than the treasure-hoarding Smaug described by novelist J.R.R. Tolkien in his "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. "

[Overpaid Slacker]

But did the scientists find the map of all the time holes?

JP

[juanbenae]

can someone post the pictures attached to the article? the server at my office nixes all yahoo pics.

thanks

[island911]

[Bill Douglas]

Actually I used to work with one of those guys. HUGE ego though.

[cowtown]

OK, I'm about to show my ignorance of biology - how is this different from the Pygmies?

[kach22i]

Originally posted by cowtown
OK, I'm about to show my ignorance of biology - how is this different from the Pygmies?

Good question, all I know is that the article said the leg joints were very ape-like. Also the skull held a very small underdeveloped brain.

I did not know that the pygmies are all over Africa before;
http://www.africaguide.com/culture/tribes/pygmies.htm

Also here is so cool stuff from the land down under:
http://www.sydneyline.com/Pygmies%20Extinction.htm
From the 1940s until the 1960s, it was fairly widely known there were pygmies in Australia. They lived in North Queensland and had come in from the wild of the tropical rainforests to live on missions in the region. This was a fact recorded at the time not only in anthropological textbooks and articles but also in popular books about the Australian Aborigines. There was even an award-winning children's book tracing their origins. The more famous photographs of the Australian pygmies were reproduced in both the academic and the popular literature.

PS: I would post the picture, but Z-man would have to edit it, guess they did not wear clothes.

[RickM]

Originally posted by cowtown
OK, I'm about to show my ignorance of biology - how is this different from the Pygmies?

I'd guess that pygmies, while small in stature, are genetically one of "us" and posess all the traits of Homo Sapiens.

Homo sapiens - the only surviving hominid; species to which modern man belongs; bipedal primate having language and ability to make and use complex tools; brain 1400 cc