The hobbit saga continues - more fossils found

Last show I was on (March 9th) Mike and I were discussing evolution, in particular the contention about the so called 'hobbits' or miniture people found on an island. Doctors are saying that the smallness might be due to feeding deficiencies, as opposed to the people being smaller in general. The debates brings into play our notions of species, variation, and assumptions made in a field where we often run into 'Just so Stories' about what happened - or people that jump to conclusions without pausing to check...

Like the dodo and the tambalacoque sory or the hares and the lynx story - classics of textbooks on evolution, until someone actually decided to check the evolution pressures and discovered that the lynx didn't overeat the hares, causing a decline in hare population and therefore a crash in lynx popultaion (classic predator-prey - the grass the rabbits were eating evolved to be toxic to the hares. Or was it forest fires causing the damage?

And it's not sure the dodos ate the tough seeds, more likely bats and parrots did besides teh seeds are still germinating so the extinction of the dodo did not cause the extinction of the tree.

Mmmm ranting now :).

Anyway back to the point at hand - More fossils have been found! Thus the saga continues!!!!

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/080310_micronesia

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