"Island biogeography and a mysterious disappearance: The strange tale of the Hobbits of Flores"
By Prof. Mike Morwood
with Prof. Bert Roberts and Dr Kira Westaway
You do not expect to find a new human species living until just 12,000 years ago on Flores, a remote island in East Indonesia . But this is exactly what our Australian-Indonesian team reported in describing Homo floresiensis - or Hobbit' as the species holotype has become known.
Professional and public reaction to the find has been unparalleled because it was so unexpected. Why?
Firstly, Indonesia , at the periphery of the Old World , has also been considered peripheral to major events in hominin evolution. A view supported by the fact that only two hominin species have been previously reported from the region despite over 100 years of active field research H. erectus and modern humans
Secondly, there are the characteristics of the new species people only a metre tall, with a tiny brain and ape-like limb proportions. This is pushing, perhaps exceeding, the generally accepted view of what it is to be human. The species does not fit with many preconceptions about where, how and when humans evolved, and what they should look like.
In this seminar, I will describe some common evolutionary trends on islands, including changes in brain size, body size, dentition and limbs, and will argue that H. floresiensis encapsulate two contradictory aspects of island evolution, namely -.
- Innovation and the development of new traits.
- Conservatism and the retention of primitive lineages and traits, which have been replaced elsewhere.
I will also argue that the characteristics of Homo floresiensis , the late survival of an archaic hominid lineage on an island, and its extinction when modern humans arrived, fits with what little we know, and what we obviously don't know, about the history of animal dispersal and evolution in Asia.
Prof. Mike Morwood (left) is pictured with Prof. Bert Roberts (right) and Dr Kira Westaway (front). In the centre is a statue of the Hobbit.
RSVP and Information: Vicky Wallace on 4221 4126 or email vwallace@uow.edu.au
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