Twenty years ago, scientists discovered the fossil of an early human species about 3.5 feet tall on an Indonesian island, giving it the nickname “Hobbit.”
Now, new research suggests its ancestry. hobbit It was also slightly shorter.
“We did not expect to find small individuals at such ancient sites,” said Yosuke Kaifu, co-author of the study published Tuesday in the journal Nature.
Hobbit fossils date back between 60,000 and 100,000 years ago. The new fossils were unearthed at a site called Mata Menge, about 45 miles from the cave where the first hobbit fossils were discovered. The fossils were discovered at the top of a ribbon-like, pebbly sandstone layer in a small river. They contained very small teeth, likely belonging to two individuals, the researchers said.
Yosuke Kaifu / AP
In 2016, researchers suspected that early relatives were shorter than hobbits after examining jawbones and teeth recovered from new sites. Further analysis of small arm bone fragments and teeth suggested that the ancestor was only 2.4 inches shorter and existed 700,000 years ago.
“They convincingly showed that these are very small individuals,” said Dean Faulk, an evolutionary anthropologist at Florida State University who was not involved in the study.
Researchers are wondering how the hobbit (named Homo floresiensis after Indonesia’s remote island of Flores) evolved to be so small and where it fits in the story of human evolution. We have been discussing whether. They are thought to be one of the last early human species to become extinct.
Gerrit van den Bergh/Associated Press
Scientists still don’t know whether the hobbits shrunk from an earlier, taller human species called Homo erectus that lived in the region, or from an even more primitive human predecessor. . Matt Tocelli, an anthropologist at Canada’s Lakehead University, said more research and fossils are needed to determine the hobbit’s place in human evolution.
“This question remains an open question and will continue to be the focus of research for some time to come,” Tocelli, who was not involved in the study, said in an email.