Homo floresiensis

The April issue of National Geographic has an interesting article on Homo floresiensis. The article is written by Mike Morwood, Thomas Sutikna and Richard Roberts. The basics of the find are covered (who, what, when, where, etc)and brief mention is made of the microsephaly issue, but the find is presented as legitimate. They cover other issues such as island dimorphism and provide some interesting info concerning the archaeology of the site. This may be intersting.
A second article, by Josh Fischman, covers finds of Homo erctus at Dmanisi, Georga. The main emphasis of the article is on one of specimens that was toothless. More importantly, the mandible shows signs of bone resorption - indicating the individual survived after loosing his teeth. In this respect this find is similar to finds of later neanderthals. The author also discuss the spread of H. erectus out of Africa, and of course, links it to the H. floresiensis finds. One of the more interesting pieces of information in the article is that the Dmanisi fossils were smaller than the african or asian erectus specimens (excepting H. floresiensis). Height is around four and a half feet and cranial capacity averaged 650 cc's. Some traits displayed by the four skulls are similar to H. habilis and one of the discovers, David Lordkianidze, is quoted as saying "... this is something between habilus and erectus, and maybe it's the founder of erectus".

Interesting, I really need to get to a library and catch up on whats been happening in the world of Paleoanthropology.