Tiny fossil arm bone sheds light on evolution of ancient Indonesian ‘hobbits’

By Adam Brumm, Professor of Archaeology, Griffith University
Gerrit (Gert) van den Bergh, Researcher in palaeontology, University of Wollongong
Yosuke Kaifu, Professor of Biological Anthropology, The University Museum, The University of Tokyo, University of Tokyo

We have discovered rare and very old human fossils on the Indonesian island of Flores, including an astonishingly small adult limb bone. Our finds are reported in a new paper out today in Nature Communications.

Dated to around 700,000 years old, these findings throw new light on the evolutionary history of Homo floresiensis, the so-called “hobbits” of Flores who inhabited this small island…

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