Brain was small, but souped-up: controversial 'hobbits' may have had complex thoughts.

In the strange and contentious world of fossil hobbits, a chimp-sized brain may boast humanlike powers. An analysis of the inner surface of an 18,000-year-old skull assigned to Homo floresiensis, also known as hobbits, suggests that this tiny individual possessed a brain blessed with souped-up intellectual capacities, Dean Falk of Florida State University in Tallahassee reported April 2.

As H. floresiensis evolved a relatively diminutive brain, the species underwent substantial neural reorganization that allowed its members to think much like people do, Falk contended. She also reported the findings online February 28 in the Journal of Human Evolution.

Falk compared a cast of the cranium's inner surface, or endocast, obtained from the partial hobbit skeleton LB1 with endocasts from modern humans and from other fossil skulls in the human evolutionary, or hominid, family. These casts show impressions made by various anatomical landmarks on the brain's surface."LB1 reveals that significant cortical reorganization was sustained in ape-sized brains of at least one hominid species," Falk said.

Evidence has shown that some hominid species experienced marked increases in brain size over time, but neural reorganization took center stage for others, including hobbits, she proposed. Currently, no one knows whether a large-bodied or small-bodied species gave rise to hobbits, whose fossils have been found on the Indonesian island of Flores.

Although small in size, LBI's endocast displays a humanlike shape, Falk asserted. An endocast from Australopithecus africanus, a roughly 3-million-year old South African hominid species, looks similar to that of LB1, Falk said.

Yet unlike the earlier A. africanus, LB1 possesses a set of brain features that other researchers have implicated in complex forms of thinking done by people today, she said. These features ran from the back to the front of the brain. Traits such as expanded frontal lobes and enlarged regions devoted to integrating information from disparate areas would have supported creative and innovative thinking, in Falk's view.

No signs of disease or abnormal development appear on LBI's brain surface, she noted. Some argue that the specimen came from a modern human who had a type of growth disorder and so shouldn't be considered a separate species.

In another presentation on April 2, William Jungers of the Health Sciences Center at Stony Brook University in New York presented evidence that LB1 did not suffer from cretinism, a growth disorder attributed to it last year by one team that doubts the fossils represent a distinct species. CT scans of LB1 show no signs of dental, skull or limb conditions associated with cretinism, Jungers said. People with cretinism generally have much larger brains than that of LB1.

Hobbit-fueled controversy remains strong, though. In a meeting presentation on April 3, Robert Eckhardt of Pennsylvania State University in University Park reported that the height range within a foraging group of people now living on the hobbits' Indonesian island home overlaps with height estimates for LB1. Eckhardt and his colleagues argue that, given this finding and others, LB1 can't be its own species.