Peter Brown, whose team of scientists documented the discovery of a new species of early human in 2003, will deliver a Voices of Discovery lecture at 7:30 p.m., Monday, Feb. 20 in McCrary Theatre, located in the Center for the Arts on the Elon campus. His lecture is free and open to the public.
Brown and a team of Australian and Indonesian colleagues discovered the fossil remains of an apparently new species of human named Homo floresiensis in the Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. Previous archaeological work has suggested the existence of only two human species, Homo erectus and Homo sapiens, in Asia during the Pleistocene Epoch, approximately 1.8 million years to 10,000 years ago.
The group found remains of at least seven individuals, dating from 38,000 years old to as recently as 13,000 years old. Now commonly called “hobbits,” these individuals were approximately one meter tall, with a brain size about one-third that of Homo sapiens. There is also evidence that Homo floresiensis made stone tools, hunted and cooked food with fire. They are believed to have evolved from Homo erectus by an evolutionary process known as “island dwarfing” or island adaptation. Brown’s findings suggest that the human evolutionary tree may be more complex than previously thought and provides further evidence that the human species is subject to the same evolutionary forces that affect all other species.
Brown is a paleoanthropologist at the University of New England in Australia, where he teaches courses in human evolution, paleoanthropology and forensic anthropology. His current research work focuses on finding the ancestor of Homo floresienses. Brown hopes to find fossil evidence on Flores or neighboring islands that supports the dwarfing hypothesis.
Brown’s presentation is part of the Voices of Discovery science speaker series, sponsored by Elon College, the College of Arts and Sciences. The series invites noted scholars in science and mathematics to Elon to share their knowledge and experience with students.
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