Hobbit is NOT a separate species

[Minimalist]

Quite Beag, whereas isolation migh cause dwarfism it's stretching credibility to suggest skeletal changes of that nature I would think.

Roy.

Especially that those changes would revert back to australopithicus.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Quite Beag, whereas isolation migh cause dwarfism it's stretching credibility to suggest skeletal changes of that nature I would think.

Many other fauna of that era on Flores exhibit similar skeletal changes, Roy. HF follows the same pattern.

Anyway, if HF was a descendant of a descendant of a late australopithecine/early homo hybrid that got to Flores under its own steam (and somewhere along the timeline got isolated and adapted to its environment/situation – but not enough, because it perished, didn't it) then the odds are HF's predecessors would have followed basically the same routes east the other homonoïds did.

OK, let's test that: we need to find remains between Flores and Africa that could be interpreted as HF predecessors. Are there candidates for that?
Those would be even more primitive – more australopithecine – than HF, of course!

I think we still need to find those, don't we?
But it would be revolutionary if we did, because it looks like in that case we would have to recognise that it wasn't just hominids that left Africa (in waves), explored the world, and ocassionally doubled back, but that australopithecus did that too...
And 'fraternization' between the australopithecines and the hominids on their great treks east could have produced as a hybrid HF's grandpa, who's lineage got stranded on Flores, tried to adapt, but withered and went extinct.

Cute projection. But I'm not buying it.
First we need to find HF's grandpa along the route. Then you've got my attention.

Here's an interesting backgrounder on "the ups and downs of primate brain evolution: implications for adaptive hypotheses and Homo floresiensis":
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/8/9

For now I go on the concept that HF was the result of an isolated HE and some recessive, and regressive genes. Not a separate species.

[Digit]

No, but they were certainly a separately evolving lineage. Lets be honest about it, all the various definitions of a species are suspect, which is why there are various definitions,

Roy.

[Rokcet Scientist]

No, but they were certainly a separately evolving lineage.

Absolutely, and they would have developed into a separate species had they survived. But they didn't. HF was an almost species, but not quite. HF was, eventually, an evolutionary failure.

[Rokcet Scientist]

What happened to HF happens to all species all the time: adaptation to their environment/situation. Evolution.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... sland.html