Hobbit Update

[BillT]

More hobbit-like fossils have been found on the Indonesian island of Flores. They are thought to be ancestral to the original hobbit fossils that are much more recent.
They are about 700,000 years old, which rules the idea that they were a shrunken Homo sapiens because Homo sapiens weren't around that long ago.
They considered most likely to be derived from Homo erectus which got stranded on the small flores island and then underwent island induced dwarfism, something which apparently also happened to some mini-elephants found in the same place as the new fossils.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/06/tiny-jaw-reveals-dawn-hobbit?utm_campaign=news_daily_2016-06-08&et_rid=33537079&et_cid=545916

[Mugwump]

More hobbit-like fossils have been found on the Indonesian island of Flores. They are thought to be ancestral to the original hobbit fossils that are much more recent.
They are about 700,000 years old, which rules the idea that they were a shrunken Homo sapiens because Homo sapiens weren't around that long ago.
They considered most likely to be derived from Homo erectus which got stranded on the small flores island and then underwent island induced dwarfism, something which apparently also happened to some mini-elephants found in the same place as the new fossils.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/06/tiny-jaw-reveals-dawn-hobbit?utm_campaign=news_daily_2016-06-08&et_rid=33537079&et_cid=545916

I was reading something about this earlier...

"Homo floresiensis ("Flores Man"; nicknamed "hobbit") is an extinct species widely thought to be in the genus Homo. The remains of an individual that would have stood about 3.5 feet (1.1 m) in height were discovered in 2003 at Liang Bua on the island of Flores in Indonesia."

[BillT]

They think the older ones (~70,000 vs. ~700,000 years ago) they found were even shorter!

[Mugwump]

They think the older ones (~70,000 vs. ~700,000 years ago) they found were even shorter!

,,,really ??...I can't imagine much shorter even surviving in those times...