‘Hobbit’ Fossils Surprise Scientists With Small, Ancient Specimens.

In 2004, anthropologists on the Indonesian island of Flores discovered the remains of a diminutive hominin, Homo floresiensis. Now, a different group of researchers has discovered the remains of the teeth and the first hand of the so-called Hobbit species, which they say belonged to the youngest known human. These findings shed light on how these small hominins evolved.

“This very rare specimen confirms our hypothesis that the ancestors of the Homo floresiensis they were very small in size; however, it now appears from the small fragments of this leg bone that the first ancestors of the ‘Hobbit’ were smaller than we previously thought,” said Adam Brumm, archaeologist at the Australian Research Institute of Anthropology at Griffith University. Brisbane, university release.

Anthropologists have found smaller, older bones than before

The remains of H. floresiensis (pronounced flor-eh-see-en-sis) found in 2004 was dated to about 60,000 years old, about 10,000 years before the extinction of the species. The researchers found that the little people grew up to 3 feet 7 inches in adulthood. They soon became known as ‘Hobbits’ because of their position.

New research—published today at Nature Communication—describes the teeth, jaw, and part of the long bone of the upper arm) which was at least four. H. floresiensis individuals about 700,000 years ago. Each of the fossils was younger than the remains discovered at Liang Bua, which are 640,000 years younger.

“This 700,000-year-old adult’s humerus is no shorter than that of Homo floresiensis, is the smallest upper arm bone known from the global hominin fossil record,” Brumm said. The newly discovered humerus was only 3.46 8.79 inches tall, which led the team to conclude that it belonged to a 100-foot-tall adult.

The research “strengthens the relationship between these early fossils and the latest sample from Liang Bua, both in terms of body shape and body size which is very small, even in adults,” it said. Chris Stringer, an anthropologist at London’s Natural History Museum. related to the latest paper, via email to Gizmodo. “Being able to trace one continuous hominin lineage back to that time holds great promise for future research.”

‘Hobbit’ people, insular dwarfism, and the hominin family tree

The people of the island of Flores persisted until about 50,000 years ago, when modern humans appear in the fossil record in Southeast Asia.

In 2019, anthropologists discovered a rare type of human remains on the island of Luzon, Philippines. The researchers concluded that this species –A man from Luzon—grew to about the same height as the people of Flores.

Hominins may have become smaller as a result of “insular dwarfism”, a process in which species with limited access to resources are reduced in size. For example, H. floresiensis shared Flores and Stephenan extinct form of a very young elephant.

In 2021, a different group of researchers found evidence of interbreeding between Denisovans—another group of extinct hominins—and modern Southeast Asians, suggesting that the species the southern ones may be an offshoot of the Denisovans. Departure of Mata Menge Homo floresiensis are about hundreds of thousands of years older than the first evidence of Denisovans, it seems possible that these small-scale people did not come from Denisovans. So how did the Flores Hobbits come to be?

What is it Homo floresiensis fossils refer to human evolution

The latter group suggests that the hobbits of Flores are descended from them A standing man in Java. In their paper, the group mentions the similarities between the teeth of ancient species and the teeth of 700,000-year-old recreational species. The team also cited stone tools found in the So’a Basin as evidence that H. erectus it separated from Flores about 1 million years ago, and decreased in size over the next 300,000 years. But that is far from a sure thing.

“Although the authors argue that these findings increase the possibility that floresiensis ultimately evolved from Indonesian A standing man first, there is still a mysterious presence floresiensis of the bones of the hand which closely resemble a Australopithecus afarensis and chimpanzees rather than humans,” said Stringer. “Maybe early erectus ancestors still had such hand bones, or (which seems very weak to me) floresiensis it also changed this old form of hand to hand. “

Stringer also said that, while less activity may occur on Flores, it may occur on other islands in the region such as Sumbawa or Sulawesi.

Many fossils may help explain how our tiny humans came to be, as well as why they disappeared. For now, the 700,000-year-old hand bone seems to suggest a new record for a small ancient human.