EXPERTS have made an incredible discovery that suggests a hobbit-sized human species that once roamed a remote island paradise was even smaller than previously thought.
Scientists first found bones on the island of Flores in Indonesia twenty years ago and nicknamed them “hobbits” in reference to their height of 3’5 feet.
6
6
6
However, a new study suggests that their ancestors were even shorter than the humans who came after them – being 6.1 centimeters shorter at just 1.00 meters.
The original hobbit fossils date back to 60,000 to 100,000 years ago, but research has dated the ancestors’ remains to 700,000 years.
The shorter fossils were unearthed in 2016 in Mata Menge, Flores, 72 kilometers from Liang Bua Cave. The remains of his descendants were discovered.
A small fragment of arm bone and teeth have been analyzed and now shed light on an even older and smaller human species.
At the time, researchers suspected the ancestors might have been shorter than hobbits after studying bones collected from the new site.
Research suggests that the island’s little hobbits were 6.8 centimeters smaller than their predecessors.
Study co-author Yousuke Kaifu from the University of Tokyo said: “We did not expect to find smaller individuals at such an ancient site.”
Dean Falk, an evolutionary anthropologist at Florida State University who was not involved in the research, said: “They convincingly demonstrated that these were very small individuals.”
Researchers have debated how hobbits, officially called Homo floresiensis or Flower Man after the remote Indonesian island, evolved to be so small.
They are believed to be among the last human species to go extinct.
Artists’ impressions showed that the first hobbit-like humans were stocky, with thick black hair all over their bodies and dark skin.
Experts still don’t know whether the hobbits departed from an earlier, taller human species called Homo erectus that lived in the area, or from an even more primitive human predecessor.
Matt Tocheri, an anthropologist at Lakehead University in Canada not involved in the study, said: “This question remains unanswered and will continue to be a focus of research for some time.”
The findings were published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.
Homo floresienis were ancient humans whose adults measured just five feet tall and their brains were the size of a chimpanzee.
Because of their miniature size, boffins affectionately called them “hobbits”, after the titular character from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
One theory states that the hobbits may have arrived on the island from Java after being swept out to sea by a tsunami.
Over time, they could have shrunk on their new island home – a strange but common phenomenon known as island dwarfism.
6
6
Other human ancestors
MODERN humans are homo sapiens, but we were not the first, according to scientists.
Neanderthals are some of the best-known extinct humans.
They lived in Europe and Asia from about 400,000 to 40,000 years ago.
Their facial features included a large nose, strong, double-arched eyebrows, and short, stocky bodies.
They were around 1.5 meters tall and weighed approximately 10 to 13 stone.
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
