The 2003 discovery of a species of hominin (extinct human ancestor) that lived on the Indonesian island of Flores more than 50,000 years ago created a tremendous amount of interest in the scientific community. This was in part because this species, which was given the scientific name Homo floresiensis , was extraordinarily small. Its skeletal remains suggested the average adult stood just 38 inches (slightly less than one meter) tall, making it much shorter than its modern human cousins living in other parts of the world.
But a new study has just been released showing that these “ hobbits ,” as the species is referred to colloquially, were even tinier than previously believed. Based on measurements of a newly recovered set of hobbit fossils, which date back far beyond 50,000 BC, it seems the average adult actually reached a height that was 2.4 inches (6 centimeters) shorter than the original estimate.
The Mata Menge humerus fragment (left) shown at the same scale as the humerus of Homo floresiensis from Liang Bua. (Yosuke Kaifu/ Nature ) A New Home, a New Species: Human Evolution in Action In an article just published in the journal Nature Communications , an international team of researchers report the results of their analysis of H. floresiensis teeth and bone samples obtained from an early Middle Pleistocene paleoanthropological site known as Mata Menge.
Located approximately 45 miles (70 kilometers) to the southeast of Liang Bua Cave, where the first hobbit fossils we.