'Hobbit' Brain Reconstructed

In the fall of last year, scientists announced the fossil discovery of a three-foot-tall adult female hominid on the Indonesian island of Flores.  The diminutive creature, which may have lived as recently as 18,000 years ago, had a brain approximately one-third the size of modern adult humans.

Scans of the female's skull have allowed scientists to reconstruct a digital model, shown above, of the long-ago-decayed brain.  From a comparative analysis, it appears that the "Hobbit" - as some have called her - was not a modern human with a disease or developmental disorder.

Instead, it is likely that Homo floresiensis represents a previously unrecognized species of early humans.

Dean Falk of Florida State University and colleagues compared the H. floresiensis brain model to others from several human ancestors:  Homo erectus, Australopithecus africanus, and Paranthropus aethiopicus, as well as from great apes and modern humans - including a pygmy and a person who suffered from abnormal brain growth. 

The results, published online this week in Science, indicate that the overall shape of the Flores brain is closest to that of H. erectus. 

There are, however, slight differences - including an expanded temporal lobe, which the authors suggest may constitute a higher level of cognitive processing in H. floresiensis' chimpanzee-sized brain.

-- LiveScience Staff

Credit: Kirk E. Smith of the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology of Washington University