This may irk some folks, possibly even piss 'em off, but there is a HELL of a lot of wrongness going around in this thread with specific regard to the science. Let's get going.
Home Floresiensis
Theres one for the meat eaters. H.Floresiensis evolved after homo sapiens sapiens, the ancestors of modern humans. H.Floresiensis gets its name from the fact that it was considered vegetarian, mostly eating flowers. They were said to be pigmies with an adult height of 3.3 feet, but apparently although they outlived the h.neandathals, they didn't outlive the h.sapians sapians and thus are no more.
Jonus.. I have yet to see
anyone in the field make those assertions!
The reason
Homo floresiensis was named that is because it was found on the island of Flores in Indonesia (I know this without looking at the Wiki, but I bet ya it says the same thing). Your tip off is the "ensis" portion of the specie taxonomy. No one can say that it evolved after
H. sapiens, in fact, it's thought by many to be a relative of
H. erectus, at the very least. It closely resembles earlier Australophithecines.
How on earth did you get the rest? The flower eating being its primary diet and the basis of the nomenclature, that
H. sapiens sapiens (maybe you're thinking of
H. heidelbergensis, or Archaic
H. sapiens) is an early modern human, etcetera? For instance, your statement that
H. floresiensis evolved as a pre-modern human during the very time of the advent of modern humans.. where did you get that? There's nothing in the extremely limited fossil record that says anything other than we're (somewhat) certain that by about 12,000 years ago the species had died out, again, only according to the fossil record. Considering that there is still debate as to its origins, it seems that there is still a good possibility that this little hominid may reach back to
H. erectus times (about 1,000,000 years ago), and possibly even earlier.
I've found some shots of the good skull, and I have yet to see anything of the dentition that would bring one to believe that
H. floresiensis was limited to flower-eating. I have also yet to read anything from those in the field that this anyone believes this to be the case. How did you reach this conclusion, when we have the (now extinct, contemporary pygmy elephant)
Stegodon bones with cut marks on them excavated in situ in the same cave in the SAME STRATA as
H. florensiensis? Who did that? The elephants? I think that it may be a safe guess that
H. floresiensis did that. To what end? To get at the flowers in the elephants' stomachs? Something tells me no (that would be my stomach). Something tells me it is more likely than not that, just as hominids and most all other primates do and have done, this little guy was omnivorous. A quote from an article I'm linking at bottom:
The archaeological evidence strongly suggests that H. floresiensis made sophisticated stone tools, including choppers, cutting blades, scrapers, and even spear points
Wouldn't you think that if they made spear points they're using them to stick something, something alive and animal? It's highly unlikely that they're using them to stick potatoes.
This is a FANTASTIC magazine, the only subscription I've kept up despite my tightening economic belt (the list of those eliminated includes SciAm and Discover):
http://archaeology.org/ <--- I get the hardcopy, but they have lots of stuffs on the site, too.
And, for everyone's reading enjoyment, the mag's article on
H. florensiensis.
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/flores/
I've got to say, if you're going to make statements as though they are fact, could you please make the effort to check your own sources first?
When a species evolves until they evolve no more, they are considered a "specialist" which is what leads to their demise. If they had continued to evolve as Homo Sapiens did they may not of dissappeared.
So what a great point, the species that did NOT eat meat did NOT survive.
You know I love you, but that's incorrect. All species have evolved to fit particular ecological niches, thusly, are specialized. Some are more specialized than others, but this does not mean they can not or will not evolve any further.
No ever said the alligator can not evolve, it just has no reason to. Species evolve when needed, however some species specialize and it leads to extinction, take the wooly mammoth for instance, it specialized to survive the extremely cold climate, when the climate warmed to fast, the wooly mammoth became extinct. It's the same thing, with certain species of human. When they specialize they become extinct.
That's not quite how evolution works. Evolution occurs with the random mutations of genes. Some of these mutations work great for the current organism's circumstances. Other genes spell the demise of some. Those that survive, obviously, pass on those successful mutations. However, there is nothing reasoned or purposeful about evolution (or punctuated equilibrium). In other words, it is ENTIRELY accidental and does not come about because it's "needed".
I think man has something to do with woolies going bye bye, don't you?
out.
My own jury is still out on that. So, I may disagree. I think it's just as likely that it was disease. Why didn't the buffalo die out at the same time as other North American mega-fauna? Cougar? Modern wolves? How come mammoths in Siberia, which had been populated before N.A., also died out around the same time? There was a lot of upheaval on earth at that time, not to mention that not all diseases leave their traces behind.
