Scientists have discovered a tiny species of ancient human that lived 18,000 years ago on an isolated island east of the Java Sea - a prehistoric hunter in a "lost world" of giant lizards and miniature elephants.
These people stood 3 feet tall and had heads the size of grapefruit. They co-existed with modern humans for thousands of years yet appear to be more closely akin to a long-extinct human ancestor.
This phenomenon, known as the "island rule," is common in the animal world but had never been seen before in &to=http://english.pravda.ru/society/2002/04/19/27771.html' target=_blank>human evolution, informs Newsday.
Well, what a day for science - a discovery that's been hailed as the most significant find in the past 100 years.
A team of Australian and Indonesian archaeologists has unearthed the skeleton of a new species of human in a cave on the remote Indonesian island of Flores.
Less than one metre tall, it's been nicknamed the "Hobbit" and it's estimated to be 18,000 years old.
Its discovery suggests early humans branched into more forms than previously thought and that there was a time, not so long ago, when two very different human species walked the planet, informs ABC Online.
According to USA Today, Brown's team believes that Hobbit is an example of island dwarfism, the widely observed tendency of isolated species to evolve toward smaller sizes because they are separated from mainland predators. The scientists suggest that the species started as an offshoot of Homo erectus, a human ancestor dating to 1.8 million years ago, that reached Flores by boat and eventually got smaller, hunting pygmy elephants and dodging Komodo dragons.
These beings must have been reasonably smart, "as they were manufacturing sophisticated stone tools, hunting pygmy elephants and crossing at least two water barriers to reach Flores," says study co-author Richard Roberts of the University of Wollongong. "The latter two activities must surely have been group activities, which implies communicative skills and use of language ... all with a brain the size of a grapefruit."
Indeed, the brain size of H. floresiensis is most like those of our ancestors who lived more than 3 million years ago. The ratio of brain size to body mass resembles that of present-day chimps.
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