The fossils found on Flores Island, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, may be able to resolve one of the mysteries in the science of anthropology, the descent of the superb short human species called "the Hobbits."
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| Archaeological excavations on Flores, where the discovery of fossils of Homo floresiensis. (Picture from: http://adf.ly/1b2oOk) |
The scientists on Wednesday, June 8, 2016, describes the bone fragments and teeth about 700,000 years old found in an ancient riverbed known as the Soa basin (Cekungan Soa) in Mata Menge, which apparently belonged to an extinct Hobbit species.
This species was previously known only from fossils and stone tools from Liang Bua cave with the ages ranging from 190,000 to 50,000 years. The species, called Homo floresiensis, has a height of about 106 centimeters, with a small brain such as chimpanzees.
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| The skull, left, of a newly discovered 18,000-year-old species, known as Homo floresiensis, is displayed next to a normal human's skull, right, at a news conference in Yogyakarta, Indonesia Friday, Nov. 5, 2004. (Picture from: http://adf.ly/1b2nI3) |
These new fossils "strongly indicates" that the Hobbit evolved from the human species Homo erectus-bodied and big-brained that lives in Asia and has become extinct, said Yousuke Kaifu of a paleontropolog of the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo.
Homo erectus, which first appeared in Africa about 1.9 million years ago, is known from a number of old fossils 1.5 million to 150,000 years old from Java, and the new fossils from Flores it has in common with them, said Gerrit van den Bergh, a paleontologist from the University of Wollongong, Australia.
Fossils including teeth four adults and two baby teeth, a jaw bone and a skull fragment from two children and one or two adults who may be killed in a volcanic eruption. They were found in an excavation in the meadows around 70 kilometers from the caves where the bones of the Hobbit was first discovered in 2003.
The size of the jaw bones indicate that the individual was even slightly lower than that found in the cave.
Stone tools that were previously found to indicate that the large man of Hobbit ancestors reached Flores million years ago, indicating that species to shrink over 300,000 years of evolution.
"Now it seems to be seen that the 'hobbit' Homo erectus Flores was shortened," said Adam Brumm, an archaeologist of Griffith University, Australia. The research published in the journal Nature.
Size reduction that occurs in many species generation of larger mammals, such as elephants, which somehow reached new island habitat called "the island rule," driven by the limited food resources in the islands.
Brumm said the 700,000 years old fossils were erased the claims of some scientists that the Hobbit is a member of our species with a medical condition that makes them small. Homo sapiens first appeared in Africa about 200,000 years ago.
Characteristics of these fossils do not support the idea that the hobbit evolved from a more ancient humans such as Homo habilis or Australopithecus, according to the researchers. *** [EKA | FROM VARIOUS SOURCES | VOA NEWS]
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