Fossils indicate that even smaller ‘hobbits’ existed on an Indonesian island 700,000 years ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Twenty years ago, scientists on an Indonesian island discovered fossils of an early human species that stood about 3.5 feet (1.07 meters) tall, earning them the nickname “hobbits.”

Now, a new study indicates that the ancestors of these “hobbits” were slightly smaller.

“We didn’t expect to find smaller individuals at such an ancient site,” Yousuke Kaifu of the University of Tokyo, a co-author of the study, said in an email.

The original hobbit fossils date back between 60,000 and 100,000 years. The new fossils were found at a site called Mata Menge, about 72 kilometers from the cave where the first hobbit remains were discovered.

In 2016, researchers suspected that the early relatives might be shorter than the hobbits after studying a jaw and teeth collected at the new site. Subsequent analysis of a tiny fragment of arm bone and teeth indicates that the ancestors were just 6 centimeters shorter and lived 700,000 years ago.

“They have shown convincingly that these were very small individuals,” said Dean Falk, an evolutionary anthropologist at Florida State University who was not involved in the study.

The findings were published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

Researchers have debated how “hobbits” — named Homo floresiensis after the remote Indonesian island of Flores — evolved to be so small and what place they occupy in the history of human evolution. They are thought to have been one of the last early human species to become extinct.

Scientists don’t yet know whether hobbits evolved from an earlier, taller human species called Homo erectus that lived in the area, or from an even more primitive human ancestor. More research and fossils are needed to determine the hobbits’ place in human evolution, according to Matt Tocheri, an anthropologist at Lakehead University in Canada.

“This question remains unanswered and will remain under investigation for some time,” Tocheri, who was not involved in the research, said in an email.