Scientists discover ancient human ‘hobbits’ were even shorter than experts had thought

We’re discovering new things about our ancient ancestors all the time, and our perceptions are constantly being changed.

Recently, the uncovering of an ancient footprint told us that humans were walking around 30,000 years earlier than we previously thought.

Now, it's been revealed that early hominins, referred to colloquially as “hobbits”, were even shorter than many believed them to be.

In fact, new research published in the journal Nature Communications focuses on analyses of teeth and bone discovered on an island in Indonesia which suggests they were two inches shorter than previously thought.

Homo floresiensis – an offshoot of Homo erectus – is the extinct species at the centre of the research, which once made their home in the island of Flores.

It focuses on 700,000-year-old fossilized remains of this very small human species. It was previously thought that the average Homo floresiensis stood around three feet and two inches tall.

However, the new research from lead Yosuke Kaifu, who is a professor at the University Museum at the University of Tokyo, shows that the species stood around 2.4 inches shorter on average.

Kaifu said: "Acquiring a large body and large brain and becoming clever is not necessarily our destiny. Depending on the natural environment, there were diverse ways of evolution not only for animals in general but also for humans."

Researchers analysed the samples and found that the bones belonged to an adult, with Kaifu saying: "Adult bones leave traces of metabolism (we call it remodeling for bones) more than those of children. We detected a strong signal of such trace in the Mata Menge humerus, through microscopic observation of a sliced bone sample."

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