WASHINGTON—Twenty years ago on an Indonesian island, scientists discovered fossils of an early human species that stood at about 3.5 feet (1.07 meters) tall—earning them the nickname “hobbits.”
Now a new study suggests ancestors of the hobbits were even slightly shorter.
“We did not expect that we would find smaller individuals from such an old site,” study co-author Yousuke Kaifu of the University of Tokyo said in an email.
The original hobbit fossils—named by the discoverers after characters in “The Lord of the Rings”—date back to between 60,000 and 100,000 years ago. The new fossils were excavated at a site called Mata Menge, about 45 miles from the cave where the first hobbit remains were uncovered.
In 2016, researchers suspected the earlier relatives could be shorter than the hobbits after studying a jawbone and teeth collected from the new site. Further analysis of a tiny arm bone fragment and teeth suggests the ancestors were 2.4 inches (6 centimeters) shorter and existed 700,000 years ago.
“They’ve convincingly shown that these were very small individuals,” said Dean Falk, an evolutionary anthropologist at Florida State University who was not involved with the research.
The findings were published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.
The hobbits are thought to be among the last early human species to go extinct.
