Hobbit Feet!

Remember the hobbits, the real hobbits? I've mentioned them a few times. Anyway, research continues and the hobbits-are-real faction of scientists have found more evidence for the uniqueness of homo floresiensis. Namely, they've found that the hobbits had big, flat feet:

The fossil foot examined for the new study includes hallmarks of upright walking, such as stiffness and the lack of an opposable, thumblike toe for grasping, Harcourt-Smith said.

But the foot is flat—it doesn't have an arch, he said. Arches are key characteristics of the modern-human foot that provide a spring-like mechanism, particularly important for running.

"This creature would have had difficulty doing the long-distance running that modern humans do," he said.

Other primitive features, described this week in the journal Nature, include a chimpanzee-like, stubby big toe and a foot that is exceptionally long, relative to a modern human's.

"It is wild looking at it," Harcourt-Smith said. "[A hobbit] would have had to lift its leg up off the ground higher in order to clear the ground when it is walking. It would have certainly had an unusual gait."

This is, of course, unsurprising. The world's foremost authority on hobbits considered their feet an identifying feature, particularly their "leathery soles" and "thick warm brown hair"--alas, traits that remain unattested by fossil evidence. However, the size of the homo floresiensis sample's feet may indicate consanguinity with the Proudfoot strain, famous for its podial expansiveness. But even a Baggins' feet are of notable length, as may be seen in the artist's rendering below:

Middle Earth: it's Science.