Homo Floresiensis

Homo Floresiensis

Hominid Paper – Homo floresiensis

The Pleistocene (1,800,000 – 10,000 ya) was a golden period of human evolution. Many fossil hominids found in that period of time show similarities with both of their Homo erectus and their Homo sapiens. In the latter years, their fossils have also been found in many sites in Africa, Europe and Asia by paleoanthropologists. Homo floresiensis is one of the pre-modern human fossils which found in Asia and I am going to talk about it in the following paragraphs.

Homo floresiensis, also called the hobbit, is discovered by Peter Brown and Michael Morwood in Liang Bua Cave on the Island of Flores in Indonesia in 2003. (Sawyer and Deak, 2007, p. 180) The type of environment that Homo floresiensis inhabits is a cave. Liang Bua Cave is a limestone cave which is 500 m above sea level. It is about 560 km from the eastern end of Java, and 220 km east of the Wallace-Huxley Line. This Wallace-Huxley Line marks the edge of the continental shelf in Indonesia. (Sawyer and Deak, 2007, p. 177)

Homo floresiensis lived in Indonesia 95,000 to 12,000 years ago. (Culotta, 2008) Nine fossils (LB1 - LB9), including a child, have been found in Liang Bua Cave until October 2005. (Sawyer and Deak, 2007. p. 180) LB1, the “Little Lady of Flores”, is the most complete Homo floresiensis fossil has been found so far. The LB1 skeleton includes an almost complete skull and left hip bone, all of the limb long bones with the exception of one of the forearm bones, partial pelvis, fragments of vertebra, ribs and shoulder bones. Although all of the skeletons are somewhat damaged, they are complete enough for the scientists to do research on it. (Fullagar, 2005)

Homo floresiensis arm-bone to thigh-bone length ratio is 0.868. This value is 0.02 greater than in Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy, A.L. 288-1), and very close to the average length of baboon. All Homo floresiensis limb long bones have thickened bone. Hip bone, arm bone and foot bone...

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