New 'Hobbits' Bolster Species, But Origins Still a Mystery

摘要

Last year's announcement of an astonishingly tiny species of extinct human from the Indonesian island of Flores sent anthropologists reeling. News of the first, nearly complete skeleton ignited a debate about what evolutionary path might have led to humans who stood about 1 meter tall. A few researchers argued that the skeleton, dated to only 18,000 years ago, was simply a diseased modern human (Science, 12 November 2004, p. 1116).