Fossils suggest even smaller ‘hobbits’ roamed an Indonesian island 700,000 years ago

By: Adithi Ramakrishnan, The Associated Press Posted: 10:03 AM CDT Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024 Last Modified: 3:46 PM CDT Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Twenty years ago on an Indonesian island, scientists discovered fossils of an early human species that stood at about 3 1/2 feet (1.07 meters) tall — earning them the nickname “hobbits.”

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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/08/2024 (773 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Now a new study suggests ancestors of the hobbits were even slightly shorter.

“We did not expect that we would find smaller individuals from such an old site,” study co-author Yousuke Kaifu of the University of Tokyo said in an email.

This photo provided by Yousuke Kaifu shows an arm bone fragment excavated on the Indonesia island of Flores. New research suggests ancestors of an early human species nicknamed “hobbits” were even shorter. (Yousuke Kaifu via AP)

The original hobbit fossils — named by the discoverers after characters in “The Lord of the Rings” — date back to between 60,000 and 100,000 years ago. The new fossils were excavated at a site called Mata Menge, about 45 miles from the cave where the first hobbit remains were uncovered.

In 2016, researchers suspected the earlier relatives could be shorter than the hobbits after studying a jawbone and teeth collected from the new site. Further analysis of a tiny arm bone fragment and teeth suggests the ancestors were a mere 2.4 inches (6 centimeters) shorter and existed 700,000 years ago.

“They’ve convincingly shown that these were very small individuals,” said Dean Falk, an evolutionary anthropologist at Florida State University who was not involved with the research.

The findings were published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

Researchers have debated how the hobbits – named Homo floresiensis after the remote Indonesian island of Flores – evolved to be so small and where they fall in the human evolutionary story. They’re thought to be among the last early human species to go extinct.

Scientists don’t yet know whether the hobbits shrank from an earlier, taller human species called Homo erectus that lived in the area, or from an even more primitive human predecessor. More research – and fossils – are needed to pin down the hobbits’ place in human evolution, said Matt Tocheri, an anthropologist at Canada’s Lakehead University.

This image provided by the University of Tokyo shows the Mata Menge humerus fragment, left, at the same scale as the humerus of Homo floresiensis from the Liang Bua cave on the island of Flores, Indonesia. (Yousuke Kaifu/University of Tokyo via AP)

“This question remains unanswered and will continue to be a focus of research for some time to come,” Tocheri, who was not involved with the research, said in an email.

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