Unearthed hobbit fossils show tiny humans shrank 'rapidly'

Scientists have discovered the 700,000-year-old ancestor of the tiny primitive human known as "the Hobbit".

Its fossils indicate that the normal-sized primitive humans who first set foot on the Indonesian island of Flores shrank "rapidly" to become Hobbit-sized.

The remains are of at least one adult and two children, who are all just as small as their descendents, BBC News reports, citing  the journal Nature.

The Hobbit's discovery in a cave on Flores created a sensation 12 years ago. Just a metre in height (hence the affectionate nickname), it was initially thought they could have been living as recently as 12,000 years ago.

Subsequent analysis has shown they actually existed slightly further back in time, between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago - not that this lessened the fascination with the diminutive species more properly called Homo floresiensis.

And now comes new research from some of the scientists involved in the original discovery that reveals insights on the Hobbit's lineage.

The team presents much older fossils, dating back 700,000 years, unearthed at a site named Mata Menge.

These remains consist of a piece of lower jawbone and several teeth. They are remarkably similar to those of the Hobbit find in 2004 and are thought to belong to the ancestors of floresiensis.

There are also stone tools at the same site which are much older still, suggesting ancient human-like creatures lived on Flores a million years ago. One theory is that these people were another normal-sized species we now refer to as Homo erectus, which was known to live on the island of Java, about 500 km west of Flores.

According to Dr Yousuke Kaifu, from Tokyo's National Museum of Nature and Science, the discovery of the tiny 700,000 year old hobbit ancestor suggests thaterectus might have shrunk within the space of just 300,000 years, which is a remarkably short period in evolutionary terms.

"What is truly unexpected is that the size of the finds indicates that Homo floresiensis had already obtained its small size by at least 700,000 years ago."

 
Dr Gert van den Bergh, from the University of Wollongong's Centre for Archaeological Science, who led the team, said the entire team was surprised at the small size of the adult jawbone.