00:00We are Homo sapiens, but before our species walked the earth, there were many others that
00:08came before.
00:09One of those is called Homo floresiensis, and they were our smallest cousins.
00:13Experts believe they only stood around three and a half feet tall, and they hunted and
00:17gathered as far back as a million years ago, living alongside our species in some areas
00:22as recently as just 50,000 years ago.
00:25However, an adult bone fragment found in 2013 raises some questions about them, as
00:30it is extremely small even for this tiny species.
00:33Experts say the creature the bone belonged to likely only stood three feet three inches
00:37tall, with the researchers saying about it, this 700,000 year old adult humerus is not
00:42just shorter than that of H. floresiensis, it is the smallest upper arm bone known from
00:47the hominin fossil record worldwide.
00:49They say this could point them on the path to better understanding their species.
00:53One that the researchers say is poorly understood.
00:56Archaeologist Adam Brum says, the best theory at the moment is that this species evolved
01:00when a group of the early Asian hominins known as Homo erectus somehow became isolated on
01:05this remote Indonesian island, perhaps one million years ago, and underwent a dramatic
01:09body size reduction over time.
Comments