Either the article you read misrepresented the scientific findings, or you are remembering the article incorrectly.
The relevant article is from the September issue of
Science. In case people can't read the abstract:
quote:
The Primitive Wrist of Homo floresiensis and Its Implications for Hominin Evolution
Matthew W. Tocheri, Caley M. Orr, Susan G. Larson, Thomas Sutikna, Jatmiko, E. Wahyu Saptomo, Rokus Awe Due, Tony Djubiantono, Michael J. Morwood, William L. Jungers
Whether the Late Pleistocene hominin fossils from Flores, Indonesia, represent a new species, Homo floresiensis, or pathological modern humans has been debated. Analysis of three wrist bones from the holotype specimen (LB1) shows that it retains wrist morphology that is primitive for the African ape-human clade. In contrast, Neandertals and modern humans share derived wrist morphology that forms during embryogenesis, which diminishes the probability that pathology could result in the normal primitive state. This evidence indicates that LB1 is not a modern human with an undiagnosed pathology or growth defect; rather, it represents a species descended from a hominin ancestor that branched off before the origin of the clade that includes modern humans, Neandertals, and their last common ancestor.
The creationist argument has been that
H. florensiensis are the remains of modern humans with a disease; the wrist bones are an indication that
H. florensiensis are not simply diseased humans -- they are on a distinct branch of the hominid line.
I see one of two possibilities:
you read where the wrist bones different from those of modern
H. sapiens or
H. neanderthalensis, and you are misremembering, thinking they were saying that these are the wrists "of a monkey," or
the article you read is now trying to spin the news, changing the creationist story from
H. florensiensis being diseased humans to being completely non-human.
Until you can actually cite the actual article that you read, I will remain content to assume you are not remembering the article correctly, or did not understand it when you read it, or the article is more creationist propaganda.
Computers have cut-and-paste functions. So does right-wing historical memory. --
Rick Perlstein