In the new work, [Matthew] Tocheri and his colleagues analyzed three wrist bones from the hobbit skeleton, technically called Liang Bua 1 or LB1.
The shape and orientation of the bones matched those of non-human apes and were very different from the wrist bones of Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) and modern humans.
For example, the human trapezoid is boot-shaped, while the same wrist bone in LB1 is wedge-shaped.
"Are they a distinct species or are they pathological modern humans?" asks study leader Tocheri. "I think it's pretty clear that this is a smoking gun, that they are not pathological modern humans. Modern human wrists, normal or abnormal, don't look like an otherwise normal chimpanzee wrist."
I am pretty sure this is not the end of it.
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