Palaeontology

Ancient 'hobbits' were shorter than we thought, new study reveals

By T.K. Randall
August 7, 2024

Image: Homo Floresiensis Cave
Credit: Rosino / CC BY-SA 2.0 (adapted) Evidence of the mysterious 'hobbits' of Flores, an island in Indonesia, was first unearthed in a cave back in 2003 - a discovery that would go on to become a topic of much controversy and debate.

Named Homo floresiensis, these small hominids are now believed to be a previously undiscovered species of human which died out somewhere around 60,000 years ago.

Previous estimates had suggested that these real-life hobbits were an average of 3ft 2 inches tall, but now a new study has put forward the notion that they were actually even smaller than that.

By examining newly found fossils including teeth and a partial upper arm bone, scientists have been able to revise the figure down by another 2.4 inches.

This makes the bones "the smallest ever reported from an adult individual."For the research, it was important to make sure that the bones really were from an adult.

"Adult bones leave traces of metabolism (we call it remodeling for bones) more than those of children," study lead author Yosuke Kaifu of the University of Tokyo told Live Science.

"We detected a strong signal of such trace in the Mata Menge humerus, through microscopic observation of a sliced bone sample."

"The Mata Menge fossils we report here showed that the extremely small body size of Homo floresiensis evolved within the first 300,000 years of their history on the island."

"Then after that the small body size was maintained for more than 600,000 years."

"Why this happened is another difficult question."

Source: Live Science

Tags: Flores, Hobbit