Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Flores Hobbits had big feet

Big, flat, feet, to be specific, with a short big toe more reminiscent of australopithecines than of other humans. A reconstruction of the almost-complete left foot of the main specimen, LB1, shows the foot was abnormally long (by modern human standards) compared to the creature's height, which would have required a deeper knee bend and resulted in a walk people today would find "funny looking." Researchers from the State University of New York who worked on this analysis thought that a foot so different from that of a modern human was another point for the "separate species" side of this debate.

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