Talk:Homo floresiensis

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Undue Weight

As per WP:UNDUE I feel that too much of this article is given to the minority position that the Homo Florensis is not a distinct species. Most of the archived debate was from a few years ago and as no new evidence has appeared against the prevailing theory that Homo Florensis is a species then we should edit down the amount of space given to alternate theories. Master z0b (talk) 07:37, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Facial reconstruction of Homo floresiensis skull

For those following/editors of this article, I just came across the news. http://phys.org/news/2012-12-flores-hobbit-revealed.html

If someone see fit to add to the article. JoniFili (talk) 02:41, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

New study by Vannucci et al

This does not seem to me to be significant enough to be worth reporting in the aricle. Perhaps it should be in external links instead? Dudley Miles (talk) 14:49, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Why? FunkMonk (talk) 14:53, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Another new study Baab, Karen L. (10). "Homo floresiensis Contextualized: A Geometric Morphometric Comparative Analysis of Fossil and Pathological Human Samples". PLoS ONE. 8 (7). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0069119. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link) has just been published.— Rod ^talk 17:35, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed

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LB1 hoax?

Some scientists assert that LB1 is a fraud in the vein of Piltdown, or some sort of fossil misidentification. Yet this is not mentioned on the page. Henneberg and colleges have made the claim for example LB1 is less than 100 years old and contains a modern dental filling (Henneberg and Schofield, 2008). FossilMad (talk) 14:47, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, there are arguments that it is has been misidentified as a distinct species. That's covered in detail. No-one outside of fringe fantasists has ever suggested it was a hoax or fraud as far as I am aware. As for the "filling" - first I've heard of it. The skull has been extensively studied, so I've no doubt something like that would have spotted long ago. Paul B (talk) 14:52, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Here's a source: [1] "If Henneberg is right, the hobbit cannot be 18,000 years old, because only modern cultures do this kind of dental work. He wanted to see the bones again to test his idea, but his group has been denied access to the specimen by the Indonesians now in charge of it, because the discovery team is still analyzing it. "Access to the [original] specimens could have settled the tooth question ... in minutes," Henneberg says. So he made his claim not in a meeting or paper but in a book published last week and in hallway chat at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists meeting in Columbus, Ohio, earlier this month.
The idea spread around the blogosphere this week and sparked a furious response from, among others, Peter Brown of the University of Adelaide, who was part of the team that originally reported the hobbit. Brown calls the claim "nonsense" and says, "I cleaned the teeth of LB1 using brushes and soft probes. There was no filling." FossilMad (talk) 14:51, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Well that's from 2008. There have been many studies since then. Seems like a storm in blogspot. Paul B (talk) 14:58, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Henneberg and Schofield revised their book in 2010 [2] (responding to Peter Brown) and defend the claim about the modern dental filling. Since 2010, I can only find one study on the topic from 2011. On dental wear, dental work, and oral health in the type specimen (LB1) of Homo floresiensis Am J Phys Anthropol. 145(2):282-9. While this study claims that the dental filling claim has been falsified, Henneberg points out that this cannot be verified unless the original specimen is analyzed. FossilMad (talk) 16:12, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

The article you link to says "The claim that the lower left first mandibular molar of LB1, the type specimen of Homo floresiensis, displays endodontic work, and a filling is assessed by digital radiography and micro-CT scanning." That can only be done on the original specimen. There's no point doing digital radiography on a cast! So, yes, it has been refuted. It was a pretty silly claim to start off with. If it had been a major reason for scepticism, it might still have been worth including. But this seems to be one person's idiosyncratic idea. And even then, it has nothing to do with claims of "fraud in the vein of Piltdown", as you first asserted. Paul B (talk) 17:51, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

The filling story is briefly mentioned and dismissed in Chris Stringer's 2011 Origin of our Species, p. 82. Most palaeontologists accept that floresienis is genuine, and the views of the minority of sceptics are covered in more than adequate detail. Dudley Miles (talk) 17:26, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

I should have clarified: Henneberg and his colleagues have been denied access to LB1. That is why they dispute the claim the dental filling has been falsified. If you read their book Hobbit Trap they basically are hinting at a sort of conspiracy. Here's a review of the book: "They invoke the famous Piltdown forgery as an apriori rationale for questioning the authenticity of Homo floresiensis; they claim there are nonrandom errors and a "misleading pattern of removing evidence that disagrees with the 'new species' theory and reported dating"; they implicate "poor Indonesians" as potential sources of "fraud", and they wonder if the Indonesian Government is undermining scientific integrity for national interests." http://www.theaustralian.com.au/archive/news/hobbit-nay-sayers-fail-to-overturn-theories/story-e6frg8no-1111116985220 FossilMad (talk) 18:20, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

As I say, that's obsolete. A 2011 article can't be refuted in a book published in 2010. None of the reviews I have read of this book say anything about claims of fraud of conspiracy. You seem to be reading these "hints" yourself. Indeed most of the reviews I've seen are less than flattering about the book. After all it was Indonesia's own senior anthropologist, Jacob, who was the principal sceptic, and who was the one who took the specimins. Furthermore, these studies are not undertaken by the Indonesian government, but by respected scientists in serious scholarly journals. Paul B (talk) 18:45, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Re-read that section you quoted, and your description. Henneberg et al. "hint at a sort of conspiracy", the "invoke", they "claim", they "implicate", and they "wonder". In other words, in the absence of evidence, they speculate. That source deserves nothing more than a passing reference in relation to the larger disputing views. - Boneyard90 (talk) 13:43, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Peter Brown's refutation of the filling theory on his website would have been helped if he'd heard of the phrase "cast aspersions": "He has used this claim in an attempt to cast dispersion on the peer reviewed research conducted at Liang Bua" [3]. Oh dear Peter, what did they teach you in English class? Paul B (talk) 15:18, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

The entire field of paleontology is speculation is it not? "Henneberg, Eckhardt, and Schofield express concern that paleoanthropology, as a discipline, is not fundamentally engaged with doing good

science. Instead, they claim, paleoanthropology panders to the academically politic forces of grant-grubbing as validation for scientific endeavors and interpretation of fossils". [The Hobbit Trap Reviewed by Lyia Pyne http://www.paleoanthro.org/enwiki/static/journal/content/PA20110195.pdf] I think the filling dental claim should be covered in detail. FossilMad (talk) 16:37, 6 June 2014 (UTC)