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The remains of the tiny hominin Homo floresiensis (nicknamed the ‘hobbit’) still raise supersize questions ten years after the publication in Nature of their discovery in a cave on the remote island of Flores in Indonesia. This collection of reporting, comment and research — new and from Nature’s archives — examines the controversy surrounding the origins and validity of this species, including whether it belongs in our genus, Homo.
In 2004, researchers announced the discovery of Homo floresiensis, a small relative of modern humans that lived as recently as 18,000 years ago. The ‘hobbit’ is now considered the most important hominin fossil in a generation. Here, the scientists behind the find tell its story.
The sequencing of ancient DNA is generating dramatic results. The sequence from a bone fragment has revealed the existence of an unknown type of extinct human ancestor that lived in Asia 40,000 years ago.
Fossils of tiny ancient humans, found on the island of Flores, have provoked much debate and speculation. Evidence that they are a real species comes from analyses of the foot and also — more surprisingly — of dwarf hippos.
We are the only living species of the genus Homo. Given the startling results of a cave excavation in Southeast Asia, it seems that we coexisted with another species until much more recently than had been thought.
Ancient mitochondrial DNA from a hominin individual who lived in the mountains of Central Asia between 48,000–30,000 years ago has been sequenced. Comparative genomics suggest that this mitochondrial DNA derives from an out-of-Africa migration distinct from the ones that gave rise to Neanderthals and modern humans. It also seems that this hominin lived in close spatio-temporal proximity to Neanderthals and modern humans.
Evidence for hominin activity on Flores, Indonesia, has been thought to go back at least 800,000 years, as shown by fission-track dating at Mata Menge in the Soa Basin. However, new research at another locality in the Soa Basin uses the more accurate technique of 40Ar/39Ar dating to show that hominins were living on Flores at least a million years ago.
Body size reduction in mammals is accompanied by only a moderate reduction in brain size, so that the brains of dwarfs are proportionately larger than those of giants. Here, the brains of extinct dwarf hippos from the island of Madagascar are shown to be disproportionately very much smaller than those of their closest mainland relatives. If this trend no longer holds true on islands, it may explain the exceptionally small brain size of the diminutive hominin, Homo floresiensis.
The 'hobbit', Homo floresiensis, was a species of diminutive hominin that lived on the island of Flores in Indonesia until around 14,000 years ago. Analysis of the legs and feet of the partial skeleton of the type specimen (LB1) shows some ape-like features which suggest an origin not from Homo erectus but rather some other, more primitive, hominin whose dispersal into southeast Asia is still undocumented.
The primitive hominins from Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia are often thought to be akin to Homo erectus and are arguably the earliest known members of the human family outside Africa. This conclusion has come, so far, from the presentation of postcranial material: now a partial skeleton of an adolescent individual associated with a skull, and remains from three adult individuals, suggest that the Dmanisi hominids are even more primitive than that, akin to Homo habilis.
Stylistic similarities of stone tools recovered from 800,000-year-old deposits in Flores with stone tools associated with the much later Homo floresiensis suggest continuity — calling into question claims that the brain of Homo floresiensis was too small to have accommodated technology.