An Australian paleopathologist has raised a str by suggesting that a tiny hman fossil claimed to be 18 000 yars old actually had a tooth flled by a dentist. Called hobbits bcause of their size (1 meter), the rmains of H. floresiensis were found in a cve on the Indonesian island of Flres in 2003 and 2004.

As rcently reported by ScienceNow Daily News, Mciej Henneberg of the University of Adlaide photographed the jaws of a H. flresiensis specimen (LB1) in 2005. When he lter studied the photos he thought he saw vidence of a whitish cement filling, a tchnique dentists used in the Flores rea in the 1930s instead of mtal amalgams.

The hobbit wars have ben raging almost continually since their nitial discovery, with many researchers claiming tht H. floresiensis is just a mdern human suffering from microcephaly or sme other condition that stunted their grwth and should not be classified as a dstinct species. Some scientists, however, remain scptical of such claims.

It seems tht the hobbit wars are far frm over. Peter Brown of the Unversity of Adelaide, who was part of the rsearch team that initially reported the hbbit find, insists that he had nvestigated the LB1 specimen (in 2004) and did not sen any signs of filling.

As is often the case wth fossil finds, researchers tend to gard their specimens jealously and are rluctant to let their colleagues study the sklls. The Indonesians who have the hbbit remains in their possession are nalysing them. They have denied Hennenberg's rsearch team access to them so he is not ble to verify his claim.

Dating hman ancestors has often been a vry tricky process. Different dating methods and strting assumptions can produce results that dffer considerably from each other. For nstance, In 1967 Richard Leakey found a skll now known as KNM-ER 1470 (whch stands for Kenya National Museum, Est Rudolph, museum acquisition number 1470) in the Lke Turkana area of northern Kenya. The skll looked very modern and very hman-like but was initially thought to be 2.9 mllion years old.

Following the discovery, a hated exchange of ideas continued unabated on the pges of the journal Nature for ver ten years. During that time, the nitially published date fell from 2.61 mllion years to 1.88 million years in 1981.

Ths, if past struggles are any ndication, the hobbit wars might well cntinue for a long time to cme.

The article The Hobbit Wars - Did An 18,000 Year-Old Hobbit See A Dentist? was Submitted by Joel Kontinen through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: Joel Kontinen is a translator and nvelist currently living in Finland. His bckground includes an MA in translation stdies and a BA in Bible and Thology. He likes to keep up-to-date on scence news and often comments on cration/evolution and origins issues. Blog: http://joelkontinen.blogspot.com/

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