Uni in the Brewery to tell Hobbit tale

Mar 05, 2007

The first Uni in the Brewery session for 2007 will tell 'The strange tale of the Hobbit' - a story that has generated unparalleled public and professional reaction since the new human species was discovered in 2003.

Presented by research team leader Professor Mike Morwood along with Professor Bert Roberts and Dr Kira Westaway from the Faculty of Science's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, the presentation will discuss their roles in the discovery of the Hobbit on the remote Indonesian island of Flores - a discovery that has been heralded as one of the most important archaeological discoveries in 100 years.

A team of Indonesian and Australian scientists discovered the skeleton in 2003 during an archaeological dig in Liang Bua -- a large limestone cave on Flores, 600 km east of Bali.

The skeleton was of a one-metre-tall female aged about 30, who died around 18,000 years ago. The skeleton, nicknamed 'Hobbit', by the excavation team, is now the type specimen for a new human species Homo floresiensis.

The Indonesian-Australian excavation team was co-led by archaeologist Professor Mike Morwood, who recently joined UOW from the University of New England, and included Professor Roberts and Dr Kiraway (along with Dr Chris Turney) who used their world-class expertise to help date the age of the skeletal remains.

The Uni in the Brewery presentation will discuss Indonesia's peripheral role in major hominin evolution events as well as the common evolutionary trends on islands including changes in brain size, dentition and limbs.

Professor Morwood and his team will also explain why there are characteristics of the new species (people only a metre tall with a tiny brain and ape-like limb proportions) that push, and perhaps exceed, the generally accepted view of what it is to be human.

"I will also present how the characteristics of Homo floresiensis, the late survival of an archaic hominid lineage on an island and its extinction when modern humans arrived, fits with what little we know (and what we obviously don't know) about the history of animal dispersal and evolution in Asia."

When: Wednesday 7 March at 5.30pm

Where: Five Islands Brewery, Wollongong

For further information: Contact Vicky Wallace on 4221 4126 or 0422 471 031

Media please note: Professor Morwood will be available for interviews on Tuesday and Wednesday. Please call (02) 4221 3189

For more information, contact:

media@uow.edu.au
University of Wollongong
Ph: (02) 4221 5942; fax (02) 4221 3128