Word: stegodon
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Dates: during 2004-2004
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...Southeast Asia by 1.8 million years ago (the celebrated Java Man was the first to be discovered). Previous excavations in central Flores had already uncovered primitive stone tools, dating to about 800,000 years ago, mixed in with fossils of an extinct species of dwarf elephant known as Stegodon...
...Island Rule is almost certainly the reason Stegodon dwindled to the size of a water buffalo on Flores. But while examples of such shrinkage had been found in elephants, hippos and deer, it was unheard of in higher primates. "It shows that hominids are following the same evolutionary and ecological rules as other mammals," says paleontologist Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley. "Wallace and Darwin would have been delighted...
Despite their minuscule brains, the Hobbit and her kin were evidently smart enough to use fire, make tools and hunt, challenging existing notions of the relationship of brain size to intelligence. The scientists found bones of Stegodon, Komodo dragons and an assortment of rodents and other animals in the Liang Bua sediments, some of them charred by what may have been cooking fires...
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