Dean Falk, a world-renowned paleoneurologist led international team in brain analysis of ancient hominid.
Concluded that the so-called Hobbit was actually a new species closely related to Homo sapiens.
"We have answered the people who contend that the Hobbit is a microcephalic," Falk said.
The debate stemmed from the fact that archaeologists had found sophisticated tools and evidence of a fire near the remains of the 3-foot-tall adult female with a brain roughly one-third the size of a contemporary human.
"People refused to believe that someone with that small of a brain could make the tools. How could it be a sophisticated new species?"
Researchers compared 3-D, computer-generated reconstructions of nine microcephalic modern human brains and 10 normal modern human brains. Comparison of two areas in the frontal lobe, the temporal lobe and the back of the brain show the Hobbit brain is nothing like a microcephalic's and is advanced in a way that is different from living humans. Hobbit has a highly evolved brain," she said. "It didn't get bigger, it got rewired and reorganized.
Hobbit's brain is unique, which is consistent with its attribution to a new species.
It's time to move on to other important questions, Falk said, namely the origin of this species that co-existed at the same time that Homo sapiens was presumed to be the Earth's sole human inhabitant.
"It's the $64,000 question: Where did it come from?" she said. "Who did it descend from, who are its relatives, and what does it say about human evolution? That's the real excitement about this discovery."
Contact: Dean Falk
dfalk@fsu.edu
Florida State University (Public release date 29-Jan-2007
