New Discoveries on Flores Support Homo floresiensis is a Separate Species, but the Possibility for Further Research is in Doubt. (October 12, 2005)

    In October 2005 a group led by Michael Morwood, an archaeologist at the University of New England in Armidale reported on the finding evidence for the existence on the Indonesian island of Flores a species of hominid which it believes had been subject to long-term isolation, with "subsequent endemic dwarfing, of an ancestral H. erectus population. Importantly, H. floresiensis shows that the genus Homo is morphologically more varied and flexible in its adaptive responses than previously thought." While most palaeoanthropologists believe the data are convincing there has also been controversy with the suggestion the data can be explained by the remains simply of a modern human suffering from microcephaly.^{1, 2, 3}. One of the most vigorous opponents of the conclusions drawn by the UNE group is politically well connected Teuku Jacob of the Gajah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia and described by Nature as a national icon.

Nature has made extensive material available online, much of it accessible to non subscribers.  The full 2004 article is also available, together with supplementary material, online, but to subscribers only.

 The UNE group now report in Nature on the bones of nine  additional individuals belonging to the species Homo floresiensis at Liang Bua cave, where the first set of crucial specimens were found in 2003.

The new H. floresiensis specimens range from 12,000 to at least 74,000 years old according to the report that will be published in the October 13 issue of Nature.. The team also found stone tools, charred pebbles, and extinct animals, including a dwarf elephant called Stegodon in the hominid-bearing layers.

"This destroys the argument that the first skeleton was an aberrant individual," paleoanthropologist Russell Ciochon of the University of Iowa in Iowa City told ScienceNow, but Anthropologist Robert D. Martin of the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois, remains on the fence saying, "I'm not 100% convinced it's microcephaly, but I am convinced that that brain size doesn't go with those tools."

But the major issue appears to be that it is doubtful that the UNE team and its Indonesian colleagues will be able to continue their investigations of the Liang Bua cave.

"My guess is that we will not work at Liang Bua again, this year or any other year," Morwood.

The contention is that Indonesian government officials will not issue exploration permits that might prove Teuku Jacob wrong and Nature reports , "Neither Jacob nor the officials involved could be reached for comment."

According to Nature "the new bones also turned up features that are not found in modern humans. In particular, both of the jaws unearthed lack a chin structure; chins are a distinguishing feature of H. sapiens."

Morwood also told Nature that during explorations this summer at other sites on Flores and neighbouring islands, the team had found promising hints about the origin of H. floresiensis, but no new hominid bones. Work in the Soa Basin, for example, suggests that hominids were present on Flores significantly earlier than 840,000 years ago, the earliest date previously reported by the group. "That's what you might expect in the context of some of the very primitive traits of H. floresiensis. Historically the emphasis for early hominid studies has been Java. This may change."

Professor Peter Brown of UNE and a ranking member of the research team  has told the ABC that the recent work "supports that small-bodied, small-brained bipedal apes came out of Africa much earlier than previously thought," and causes them to question whether H. floresiensis arose from more recent human relatives Homo erectus, as once proposed. Professor Brown added, "The only creature which ever had these [H. floresiensis] body proportions apart from the Liang Bua material was the African australopithecine Lucy skeleton, nothing else."

"The evidence we have from... 260 bones is pointing to something other than Homo erectus or modern humans," and he now believes that the data are pointing towards an australopithicine because the relationship between the brain size and body size is "exactly" the same as that of chimpanzees and australopithicines."

All this has made Professor Brown and the team seriously question their original idea that the hobbits evolved from Homo erectus that dwarfed on their island home. "To me the Homo erectus dwarfing is looking less likely, particularly because of the brain size, body size relationship. It's not what you'd expect to get," Professor Brown said, and he now believes H. floresiensis is descended from an as yet unknown small-bodied and small-brained ancestor closely related to an australopithicine.

But Nature reports, "Early this year, archaeologist Tony Djubiantono, director of the Indonesian Centre for Archaeology in Jakarta, told Nature that digging in Liang Bua would proceed in the summer. But he never issued the permits. Djubiantono, a co-author on today's paper, could not be reached for comment. But sources say he is reluctant to challenge Jacob and his allies in the upper echelons of the Indonesian government.

Might this now be a time when Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard, could intercede constructively with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to resolve the matter in the interests of furthering scientific inquiry?