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What Scientists Have to Say About the Hobbit's Small Brain
Homo floresiensis, a pygmy-sized small-brained hominin popularly known as 'the Hobbit' was discovered five years ago, but controversy continues over whether the small brain is actually due to a pathological condition.
Now, a research team has tackled this question in the context of a comprehensive assessment of the evolution of brain and body size throughout the larger primate family.
Nick Mundy and Stephen Montgomery, from the Department of Zoology at Cambridge University, UK, and colleagues from Durham University used previously published data from living and extinct species to reconstruct the pattern of brain and body mass evolution in primates.
According to Nick Mundy, "Our results provide robust confirmation for the suggestion that strong evolutionary trends have governed the expansion of the primate brain."
"In contrast, body size evolution has not tended to increase in primates, implying brain and body mass have been subject to separate selection pressures and supporting the findings of previous studies in other taxonomic groups that these two highly correlated traits can show differences in their patterns of evolution," he said.
Brain expansion began early in primate evolution and has occurred in all major groups, suggesting a strong selective advantage to increased brainpower in most primate lineages.
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