Roughly a 700,000-year-old fossil was discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores likely belonging to the earliest species of hominins.
The fossil was found with a small adult limb bone. A team of scientists co-led by Australian-New Zealand archaeologist Professor Mike Morwood unearthed the remains in 2003 at Liang Bua cave in the island’s west.
Recently, a study analyzed the fossils and shared important information on the evolution of Homo floresiensis, also called ‘Hobbits’ of Flores after discovering additional hominin fossils from Mata Menge dating to 700,000 years ago.
Hominin with ‘diminutive, small-brained humans’
The earlier fossils belonged to ‘diminutive, small-brained humans’ who lived in Lian Bua probably 50,000 years ago, according to a statement by the scientists. This was a period when homo sapiens (us) were already existing in Australia to the south of Flores.
The timelines of homo-sapiens overlapped with the earliest species of mankind – the Homo floresiensis .
In the past, scientists hypothesized claiming that Homo floresiensis was a dwarfed descendant of early Asian Homo erectus.
However, the mystery of humans in Flores continued to linger.
Therefore, scientists conducted further excavations at the site where three more hominin fossils were discovered in Mata Menge dating back to 700,000 years ago.
This collection includes the first postcranial element, a distal shaft of an adult humerus (lower half of the upper arm bone).
Professor Adam Brumm from Griffith University and a co-author of the paper says that this 700,000-year-old adult humerus is not just shorter than that of Homo floresiensis but “it’s the smallest upper arm bone known from the hominin fossil record worldwide.”
“This very rare specimen confirms our hypothesis that the ancestors of Homo floresiensis were extremely small in body size,” he added.
“However, it is now apparent from the tiny proportions of this limb bone that the early progenitors of the ‘Hobbit’ were even smaller than we had previously thought.”
Fossil, an older variant of this hominin
The three fossil remains from Mata Menge, belonging to at least three individuals, indicated that these hominins had slightly smaller jaws and teeth compared to the Homo floresiensis found in 2003 at Liang Bua on Flores.
Upon microscopy analysis, the microstructure estimates showed that the hominin body height was about 100 cm tall.
This is six centimeters shorter than the estimated body height of the 60,000-year-old Homo floresiensis skeleton from Liang Bua (~106cm, based on the femoral length), as per the statement.
The statement added that the two additional hominin teeth from Mata Menge are also small in size and one bears shape characteristics that are most consistent with early Homo erectus of Java.
The new findings contradict the former hypothesis of Homo floresiensis having evolved from ancient hominins.
A total of 10 fossils were recovered from Mata Menge with four belonging to people (two children among them).
Anatomically, they seem to be similar to the Liang Bua Homo floresiensis and can now be regarded as an older variant of this hominin, scientists say.
“The evolutionary history of the Flores hominins is still largely unknown”, says Brumm.
“However, the new fossils strongly suggest that the ‘ Hobbit ’ story did indeed begin when a group of the early Asian hominins known as Homo erectus somehow became isolated on this remote Indonesian island, perhaps one million years ago, and underwent a dramatic body size reduction over time.”
The study was published earlier today [August 6, 2024] in the journal – Nature Communications .
Most Popular
Comments / 0