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Thursday, September 29, 2005
Describing "Hobbit Man"
Peter Brown, an Australian paleoanthropologist, visited the anthropology department today and gave a lecture earlier this evening to the USF community. 
Brown was the one who discovered and first described Homo floresiensis in 2003 after him and his team uncovered miniature yet distinctly human-like skeleton and other remains. The discovery completely rocked the anthropology community and anyone interested in human origins. Soon, television documentaries and magazine features dominated the headlines with news of “Hobbit Man,” a long-lost direct human ancestor. First described in Nature, the discovery has been most prominently featured by National Geographic, who sponsored the investigation.
The anthropology department was fortunate enough to have Dr. Brown give a special mini-lecture this afternoon where he shared some casts of H. floresiensis. Needless to say, he was quite knowledgeable and willing to speak about the debate surrounding including the finding in the genus Homo. It was a very rare glimpse (for me at least) into the very down-to-earth, human process that goes into describing such a revolutionary discovery. For my “being in the right place at the right time” moment of the semester I was asked to show Dr. Brown our biological collection that I am working with for my graduate assistantship. For someone who has a somewhat limited knowledge of paleoanthropology the task was a bit nerve racking but I managed not to confuse my hominid species too badly.
The most entertaining part of the lecture this evening was Dr. Brown relating his experience of dealing with the media frenzy surrounding the find, which he mentioned had quite a bit to do with the label of “Hobbit Man” (apparently his choice for a nickname, Flo, never caught on). It’s embarrassing for any serious scholar or student of anthropology to refer to a major discovery as a Hobbit, but the important thing is that it’s getting people excited about human origins and the growing amount of evidence in support of evolutionism.
I was going to compile a list of links related to H. floresiensis but talkorigins.org has already done that for me on their very good page about H. floresiensis.
Posted by Will at September 29, 2005 09:09 PM in Anthropology