Nah, bung, salma pernah menulis tentang orang Israel yang konon keturunan babi
dan kera. Mungkin suku suku Semit, seperti Yahudi dan Arab memang keturunan
babi dan kera, menurut theori salma fe?
Wassalam
mediacare <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
'Hobbits' not a different species, say scientists
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 7:01pm GMT 03/01/2008
The long-running debate about the existence of so-called hobbits of Indonesia
has taken a new turn with a study that suggests these ancient people were not
an unusual species of human but modern humans with a growth disorder.
a.. Telegraph TV: Did hobbits exist?
Scientists believe the "hobbit" had the same growth condition as Paddy Ryan
The work, if confirmed, suggests that there could be up to around 100
documented such "hobbits" in the world today, the people who have the mutation
that leads to them being normally proportioned but half-sized.
Four years ago, Prof Mike Morwood, of the University of New England, in
Armidale, Australia, and colleagues made headlines worldwide when they
announced the discovery of 18,000-year-old remains of Homo floresiensis in the
Liang Bua Cave on the Indonesian island of Flores.
The human evolutionary cousin, nicknamed the hobbit after the diminutive people
in JRR Tolkein's Lord Of The Rings, stood only three foot tall and was thought
to be an entirely new species of human, with a brain about the size of a
chimpanzee's.
Ever since there has been debate whether or not the bones were actually from
pygmies - even today there are pygmies on the island - and not a new species of
human that lived between 120,000 and 10,000 years ago. One idea is that they
suffered from microcephaly, a disorder that limits brain growth.
Today support for this idea comes from the discovery of a gene for a rare
growth condition, MOPD II, that causes small brain and body size but
near-normal intelligence, reported in the journal Science by a large
international team including Dr Anita Rauch of Friedrich-Alexander University
Erlangen-Nuremberg in Erlangen, Germany, and colleagues.
Adults with this rare inherited condition reach an average height of a metre
and although their brain is comparable in size to that of a three-month-old
baby, they have near unaffected intelligence. The research study was triggered
by two unrelated tiny girls living in northern Bavaria.
The culprit gene is PCNT, which encodes a protein that plays an important role
in anchoring the structure that pulls chromosomes apart during cell division.
The precise mechanisms by which these effects at the cellular level lead to the
overall effect on body size, remains to be determined, but it is intriguing
that other inherited forms of microcephaly (disorders characterized by small
brain size) have likewise been linked to genes involved in this aspect of cell
division. "Knowing that a child has MOPD II and not any other type of short
stature helps to provide the best medical management to avoid complications,"
says Dr Rauch.
In the conclusion of their article, Dr Rauch and her team speculate that the
"hobbit" fossils from Flores, Indonesia may represent people with mutations in
this gene.
An earlier paper pointed out that the wrist bones of the hobbit are are
primitive and shaped differently compared to both the wrist bones of both
humans and of Neanderthals, leading to them to conclude they do represent a
different kind of human.
But Dr Rauch points out that people who carry this mutation do have subtle bony
anomalies of the hand and wrist, "By the way, as is visible by the pictures we
show of patients, the posture of the shoulder is also abnormal in MOPD II
patients, like it was suggested for the hobbits," she added.
One MOPD II patient, is Paddy Ryan, 30, who lives in County Tipperary, Republic
of Ireland, who "manages his life extremely well in a supportive rural Irish
community," said Dr Robert Semple Addenbrooke's Hospital Cambridge.
Yesterday, Mr Ryan, who only found out he had the mutation responsib le for
condition last October, said that his parents realised the day he was born that
he was unusually small. But, despite his height, near 3ft 6 inches, "I am not
like a dwarf. Everything is in proportion. I am just a small person."
He has diabetes and it is unclear if this is linked with the MOPD II, he says,
adding that he has been told that, since it is so rare, a treatment is unlikely
to be developed.
As for everyday life, "I just get on with it. I do what I have to do," says Mr
Ryan, who drives a Honda Civic that has been specially adapted and does quality
control testing of electronics. "Noone with MOPD II has married or had
children," he adds.
Many of the MOPD II people die early due to stroke - before they even think of
having their own children, " says Dr Rauch. "On the other hand it is difficult
for them in our culture to find somebody to marry because of their stature.
Anyhow, that does not undermine the hobbit link, because the increase of such
genetic disorder comes from mating of healthy carrier people that have affected
children. Once the incidence of the disorders is high in a certain population,
they might also marry each other. But that's not a prerequisite to increase the
disorder in the population, as it is transmitted in a recessive manner over
healthy carriers."
www.telegraph.co.uk
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