Outlook Web Desk
Scientists discovered 3.5 feet (1.07 metres) tall fossils of an early human species twenty years ago in an Indonesian island and accordingly decided to name them “hobbits”.
A recent study suggested that the ancestors of the hobbits were even slightly shorter.
“We did not expect that we would find smaller individuals from such an old site”, said the co-author Yousuke Kaifu of the University of Tokyo.
As per the study, the original hobbit fossils date back to between 60,000 and 100,000 years ago. The recently discovered fossils were found at a site called Mata Menge, about 45 miles from the cave where the first fossils were found in 2004.
After studying a jawbone and teeth collected from the new site, the researchers suspected the earlier relatives could be shorter than the hobbits.
Analysis of a tiny arm bone fragment and teeth suggested the ancestors were 2.4 inches shorter and existed 700,000 years ago. Back in 2004, the findings on hobbit fossils were also published in the Nature journal.
The striking similarities between the Mata Menge fossils and Homo erectus fossils from Java island strongly supports that Homo floresiensis (Hobbits) descended from that species, said the researchers.
Since its discovery in 2004, researchers debated over how the hobbits 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.
The concept of 'island dwarfism' tells that the modern human-sized Homo erectus first appeared around 1.9 million years ago and they reduced drastically in body size between about one million and 700,000 years ago.
However, the scientists are still in search of answers to many unanswered questions regarding shrinking of the hobbits from their primitive human predecessor.
According to the experts, further research and fossils are needed to pinpoint the hobbits' place in human evolution.