A group of scientists from Australia found the first Homo floresiensis fossil along with stone tools and animal remains in Liang Bua Cave, Flores, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), Indonesia in 2003. The journal Nature said the fossil found was in the form of an adult woman aged around 30 years. 3.5 feet or 1.06 meters high. The fossil consists of a nearly complete skull and skeletal skeleton of limbs, hands and feet and part of the pelvis.
"The associated skeleton is one of the things that makes this specimen quite interesting," said Mark Collard, a biological anthropologist at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.
Archaeologists later found the jaw and skeletal remains of at least eight other small individuals, according to a 2009 article in the Journal of Human Evolution. The small stature of this specimen suggests the first fossil discovery was not an anomaly. The tiny body found in the fossil earned the species the nickname "the Hobbit". Homo floresiensis or "the Hobbit" was an ancient hominin that lived at least 17,000 years ago. The fossils of Homo floresiensis are estimated to be between about 100,000 and 60,000 years ago, and the stone tools made by this species are between about 190,000 and 50,000 years.
Homo floresiensis is an individual referred to as having a small brain, large teeth for their small size, shoulders raised forward, no chin, a receding forehead, and relatively large legs because they were short. Despite its small body and brain size, Homo floresiensis made and used stone tools to hunt small elephants and large mice. They are even reported to be able to fight predators such as giant komodo dragons by using fire. Human Origins explains Homo floresiensis' stature and cerebellum may have resulted from island dwarfism, an evolutionary process that resulted from long-term isolation on a small island with limited food sources and a lack of predators.
Guessing the Origin of Homo Floresiensis
The pygmy elephant on Flores, which is now extinct, showed a similar adaptation. The smallest species of elephant Homo and Stegodon were found on the island of Flores, Indonesia. However, some scientists are now considering the possibility that the ancestors of Homo floresiensis were small when they first reached Flores. According to research results, stone tools found on the island of Flores indicate that early humans arrived there at least 1 million years ago. However, it is not known how early humans got there because the nearest island was 29527 feet by crossing the treacherous ocean at the time. Paleoanthropologists found many stone tools related to Homo floresiensis. These tools are generally similar to those found previously on Flores and throughout the human evolutionary career namely Lower Paleolithic tools in Asia or Oldowan tools in Africa.
There is also evidence that Homo floresiensis selectively hunted Stegodon (an extinct type of elephant) because hundreds of Stegodon bone fragments showing dismemberment were found in the stratum of occupation of Homo floresiensis. When it was first discovered, Homo floresiensis was thought to be descended from the Javanese Homo erectus. However, more detailed analysis of skeletal remains has uncovered features that are more ancient than Asian Homo erectus and more similar to australopithecus, Homo habilis or hominins from Dmanisi in Georgia (classified as Homo ergaster or Homo georgicus).
Most scientists calling Homo floresiensis a legitimate species now think that its ancestry may have come from early African dispersal by a primitive Homo species similar to Homo habilis or the Dmanisi hominin. This indicates, it has a common ancestor with Asian Homo erectus but is not descended from it. Cladistic analysis supports the lack of a close relationship with Homo erectus. The recently announced discovery of a jawbone and some teeth from Mata Menge on Flores (2016) helped fill the time gap between Homo floresiensis and its previous ancestor. Stone tools possibly made by Homo erectus (or a similar species) were found on Flores 840,000 years ago which suggests that a hominin species may have lived on the island at that time. Whatever the origin of the ancestral population, it is accepted that the population underwent long-term isolation on the island and some island stunting (though perhaps initially small) that made them a 'pygmy' species endemic to Homo floresiensis. This is a common phenomenon seen in other mammals in the same environment.
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