Detailing ‘a new and surprising twig’ on the human family tree, scientists report Thursday they’ve discovered the remains of a clan of tiny human relatives, standing about 30 inches tall, that lived on an isolated island in eastern Indonesia as recently as 18,000 years ago.
Bones from seven individuals of the new species have been recovered from a 130-foot-deep cave called Liang Bua on the island of Flores, a tropical island already renowned for being home to many animal species found nowhere else in the world.
Dubbed Homo Floresiensis, or Flores Man, by the team of Australian and Indonesian researchers who found them, the diminutive humans seem to have had the island to themselves for at least 100,000 years before they became extinct, possibly victims of a volcanic eruption around 12,000 years ago or perhaps done in by the arrival of modern humans.
Evidence from the cave shows Flores Man walked upright, made stone tools, built fires and worked together to hunt large game, yet sported a grapefruit-sized brain about a quarter the size of the brains of modern humans. Its brain capacity and stature are more in line with a pre-human species that lived in Africa more than 3 million years ago, but other features, like large eye sockets and small front teeth, put the creature in the more modern Homo family.”
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