(Photo: Reuters)
A discovery of 700,000-year-old teeth and arm bones suggests the existence of a “hobbit” human on the smallest island between the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
According to the Archeologist suggests that the species Homo floresiensis sometimes called hobbits may be smaller than past thought. However, the results still divide scientists over how such extraordinary humans evolved.
Researchers Found
Hobbits were first found 20 years ago in Liang Bua Cave on the island of Flores, Indonesia. Australian and Indonesian scientists also found bones, teeth, and stone tools that were probably used to cut meat.
According to the researchers analyse the Bones they found that Homo floresiensis was 106 centimeters tall – about three and a half feet. More remarkable than its small stature was its small brain, which was about one-third the size of a modern human.
Analyzing scientists determined that the Homo floresiensis bones were approximately 100,000 to 60,000 years old.
Some scientists say that the fossils belong to children but many researchers reject this.
When scientists detailed an entrancing group of more fossils from one more area of Flores, called Mata Mainz. The roughly 700,000-year-old fossils included six teeth and part of a jaw. The Mata Menz fossils were as small as those found at Liang Bua or even smaller.
Researchers are battling to fit Homo floresiensis into the family tree of humans and their wiped-out family members, a group known as hominins.
The earliest known hominins were small, small-brained. However, two million years ago, they were supplanted by taller hominins with bigger brains(Modern Human).
Scientists compared their arm bones with those of modern children and adults. They have several signs that it had stopped growing, indicating that the individual was an adult.
After so much research, scientists argued that “Homo floresiensis evolved from a taller species of hominin called Homo erectus. Originating in Africa, Homo erectus reached Java about 1.3 million years ago and survived there for more than a million years.”
Until more fossils emerge, both Dr. Tocheri and Dr. Argue said other explanations remain plausible. It is also possible that Homo floresiensis descended from hominins from Africa who were already small when they moved across Asia.