Hobbits hunting dragons...FOR REAL by PIRATENEWS

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Hobbits hunting dragons...FOR REAL

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POSTED BY: PIRATENEWS
UPDATED: Thursday, January 3, 2013 18:02
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Thursday, January 3, 2013 3:03 PM

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Quote:
"Tolkien 'bout my generation. Happy Birthday to the master."
-George Takei

'Ebu Gogo', which translates as "grandmother who eats meat"

Stranger Than Fiction: Once Upon a Time, Real "Hobbits" Fought Real Dragons on a Tiny Island in Indonesia

High fantasy adventures on the big screen are among the most thrilling, enthralling movies to watch because of the fantastical people, places and monsters that populate them. They allow us to escape from our comparatively mundane lives by offering us a glimpse into another world, another reality where magic is real and noble heroes go on quests and do battle with dragons and other fantastical creatures. However, even some of the most fantastic elements of this genre of popular fiction are not the stuff of myth, but of history. In fact, not too long ago, diminutive "Hobbits" living in Indonesia were forced to protect their "Hobbit holes" from the deadly dragons that claimed the island as their own.

Australian anthropologist Dr. Susan Hayes has used some technological wizardry to give us a brand new look at hobbits. No, not capital-H Lord of the Rings Hobbits. These hobbits are Homo floresiensis, an ancient humanoid species given their Tolkien-inspired nickname due to their Hobbit-esque height of around three-and-a-half feet.

Hayes, who specializes in facial reconstruction, used technology more commonly used to help solve crimes to layer muscle and fat around a digital model of a female hobbit’s skull. The result, she says, is “not what you’d call pretty, but she is definitely distinctive.”

Well she’s no Rosie Cotton, I’ll give Hayes that.

Human evolution specialist Darren Curnoe, who calls the hobbit’s appearance, “surprisingly modern,” notes that while there have been artistic renderings of the hobbit done before, this is the first use of “a new approach founded in forensic science” that “can actually progress the ways we can understand what Homo floresiensis looked like.”

Curnoe also notes that while there has been controversy in the past regarding whether the hobbits were just a diseased offshoot of a different species, the general consensus now is that H. floresiensis is, in fact, a species of its own, though “precisely where it fits in the human evolutionary tree is still to be determined.”

Scientists unearthed the 18,000-year-old remains of a 3-foot-tall adult female hominid in 2003 on the remote Indonesian island of Flores. Since then scientists have argued whether the remains belonged to a human with an abnormally small head or represented a new species in the human family tree. The diminutive female had a brain approximately one-third the size of modern adult humans.

In the "Lord of the Rings" books, hobbits were rescued by giant eagles, but real-life hobbits might have been hunted by giant storks, scientists find.

The fossil remains of what may have been a hobbit-like species of human were discovered in 2003 at the Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. In that cave, scientists also unearthed a large number of bird fossils -- including 20,000- to 50,000-year-old wing and leg bones from what appears to have been a stork nearly 6 feet tall (1.8 meters).

"From the size of its bones, we initially were expecting a giant raptor, which are commonly found on islands, not a stork," said Hanneke Meijer, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

The carnivorous giant (Leptoptilos robustus) was a hitherto unknown species of marabou stork, among the largest birds alive on the planet. [Image of giant stork]

Meijer and her colleague, Rokus Awe Due, detailed their findings online Nov. 24 in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

"Flores lacked any large-bodied mammalian predators -- no hyenas, lions, wolves or dogs -- so we think, in their absence, birds like storks moved in to fill that role," Meijer told LiveScience. It was likely a ground-bound hunter, as its bones were thick, giving the bird an estimated weight of 35 pounds (16 kilograms).

The extinct predator could have fed on fishes, lizards and birds, "and possibly in principle even small, juvenile hobbits, although we have no evidence for that," she said. "These birds are opportunistic carnivores -- if you give them plenty of prey items, they'll hunt all of them."

There are no signs yet of whether hobbits returned the favor by hunting these birds. "No cut marks are seen on any of its bones," Meijer said.

Flores was home to a wide variety of dwarf and giant species, a common occurrence on islands. Among Flores' inhabitants were the pygmy elephantStegodon and the Komodo dragon, the world's largest living lizard. Many of the prehistoric animals there went extinct about 17,000 years ago, coinciding with a volcanic eruption that might have taken place on the Indonesian island of Bali, as well as shifts to a wetter climate and the arrival of modern humans.

"We're not certain as yet precisely why they all went extinct," Meijer said.

Meijer and her colleagues now plan to investigate all of the bird fossils in the cave to figure out when species arrived or evolved and when they went extinct. "This could give us a better idea of what evolutionary forces are at work there, not only on birds, but also hobbits," she said.

It remains uncertain why the cave housed so many bird fossils. "We hope a detailed study of all the layers of bones there could help explain why all these animals ended up there," Meijer said.

As for the realm of fantasy, "stories like 'Lord of the Rings' do add a nice fantasy touch to my work," Meijer said. "I have looked into legends of Indonesia to see if there were any stories of giant birds and didn't find any."

http://www.reelz.com/movie-news/15374/stranger-than-fiction-once-upon-
a-time-real-hobbits-fought-real-dragons-on-a-tiny-island-in-indonesia/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/12/09/giant-storks-fed-real-hobbit
s/

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Thursday, January 3, 2013 6:02 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Cute archaeologist chick, at lest.

"False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil." - Socrates

" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "

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