<p>After the skeletal remains of an 18,000-year-old, “Hobbit”-sized human were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, some scientists thought that the specimen must have been a pygmy or a microcephalic—a human with an abnormally small skull.</p>
<p>Not so, said Dean Falk, a world-renowned paleoneurologist and chair of Florida State University’s anthropology department, who, along with an international team of experts, created detailed maps of imprints left on the ancient hominid’s braincase and concluded that the so-called Hobbit was actually a new species closely related to Homo sapiens.</p>
<p>Now after further study, Falk is absolutely convinced that her team was right and that the species cataloged as LB1, Homo floresiensis, is definitely not a human born with microcephalia—a somewhat rare pathological condition that still occurs today. Usually the result of a double-recessive gene, the condition is characterized by a small head and accompanied by some mental retardation.</p>
<p>“We have answered the people who contend that the Hobbit is a microcephalic,” Falk said of her team’s study of both normal and microcephalic human brains published in the Jan. 29 issue of the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States).</p>
<p>See: <a href=“Florida State University”>Florida State University;