Stunnig news about our "Hobbit"  relatives

Homo Floresiensis also known as 'Hobbit' has been discovered in 2003 in the Indonesian Island of Flores. They are described as shorter and smaller in size compared to Homo Sapiens.

This week, Gerrit van den Bergh and team described the finding of 700,000 -yr-old teeth and a partial jaw from ancestor from H. Floriensis after a decade of research at the site of excavation. The jaw and teeth seem to be from human and children.

This findings are great to confirm more the presence of that ancestors but it also opens up many questions.

Why are they so small ? How did they get there ? How did the extinction happened? and interesting questions could also be to know their lifestyle and so on?

So far scientists were not sure if H. floresiensis was more similar to H. erectus or H. habilis/Australopithecus. The jaw newly discovered seem to look more like that of H. erectus. According to van den Berg, the oldest artefacts in the region suggests that H. erectus arrived on Flores around 1 million years ago.

Gerrit van den Berg is explaining it in the following video:

I hope you like this post. It seems like this week I am more inspired by evolution studies :)

We can always learn! :)

Sources:
Images from G.D. van den Bergh et al., Nature, 2016
G. D. van den Bergh et al. Nature 534, 245–248; 2016
d A. Brumm et al. Nature 534, 249–253; 2016