vineri, 10 decembrie 2010

Giant Storks May Have FRS on Real Hobbits

In the "Lord of the Rings" books, hobbits were saved by colossus eagles, but real-life hobbits strength hit been hunted by colossus storks, scientists find.

The fossil relic of what haw hit been a hobbit-like species of human were unconcealed in 2003 at the Liang Bua explore on the Indonesian island of Flores. In that cave, scientists also unearthed a super sort of shuttle fossils -- including 20,000- to 50,000-year-old aerofoil and handicap clappers from what appears to hit been a stork nearly 6 feet gangly (1.8 meters).

"From the filler of its bones, we initially were expecting a colossus raptor, which are commonly institute on islands, not a stork," said Hanneke Meijer, a chordate philosopher at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

The predacious colossus (Leptoptilos robustus) was a yet uncharted species of stork stork, among the maximal birds aware on the planet. [Image of colossus stork]

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

"Flores lacked some large-bodied mammalian predators -- no hyenas, lions, wolves or dogs -- so we think, in their absence, birds same storks touched in to modify that role," Meijer told LiveScience. It was probable a ground-bound hunter, as its clappers were thick, gift the shuttle an estimated coefficient of 35 pounds (16 kilograms).

The nonexistent beast could hit fed on fishes, lizards and birds, "and mayhap in generalisation modify small, someone hobbits, though we hit no grounds for that," she said. "These birds are expedient carnivores -- if you provide them plentitude of beast items, they'll catch every of them."

There are no signs still of whether hobbits returned the souvenir by labour these birds. "No revilement marks are seen on some of its bones," Meijer said.

Flores was bag to a panoramic difference of faerie and colossus species, a ordinary event on islands. Among Flores' inhabitants were the pygmy elephant Stegodon and the Komodo dragon, the world's maximal experience lizard. Many of the past animals there went nonexistent most 17,000 eld ago, congruent with a extrusive activity that strength hit condemned locate on the Asiatic island of Bali, as substantially as shifts to a urinator status and the achievement of recent humans.

"We're not destined as still exactly ground they every went extinct," Meijer said.

Meijer and her colleagues today organisation to analyse every of the shuttle fossils in the explore to amount discover when species arrived or evolved and when they went extinct. "This could provide us a better idea of what evolutionary forces are at impact there, not exclusive on birds, but also hobbits," she said.

It relic doubtful ground the explore housed so some shuttle fossils. "We wish a careful think of every the layers of clappers there could support vindicate ground every these animals ended up there," Meijer said.

As for the demesne of fantasy, "stories same 'Lord of the Rings' do add a pleasant vision contact to my work," Meijer said. "I hit looked into legends of state to wager if there were some stories of colossus birds and didn't encounter any."

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