INDONESIA: Australian scientists who found a new species of hobbit-sized humans who lived about 13,000 years ago on an Indonesian island said yesterday they expect to discover more new species of hominids on neighbouring islands.
The partial skeleton of Homo floresiensis, found in a cave on the island of Flores in 2003, was of an adult female that was a metre (3ft) tall, had a brain smaller than a chimpanzee's, and probably lived alongside modern humans on the island.
Australian and Indonesian scientists have since unearthed seven small hominids called "Flores man" from the Liang Bua limestone cave, the youngest living 13,000 years ago.
"The finding of this distinctive human species, this endemic human species on Flores, also implies that there will be similar endemic species on other islands in that vicinity," project leader Mike Morwood, associate professor in archaeology at Australia's University of New England, said yesterday.
"So, you're likely to have a distinctive little hominid population on Lombok, on Sumbawa, on Timor, and on Sulawesi, and each of those will be distinct species, because they will have evolved in isolation."
"Flores man" is thought to be a descendent of Homo erectus, which had a large brain, was full-sized and spread out from Africa to Asia about two million years ago.
Morwood said the discovery of hominids on Flores was unexpected as no Asian land animal at the time had crossed the sea to the islands in eastern Indonesia. But if Homo erectus reached Flores and evolved into "Flores man" then others probably reached nearby islands and also evolved into new human species.
Scientists have pieced together an image of a hairless, dark-skinned dwarf species with a head the size of a grapefruit, sunken eyes, a flat nose and large teeth and mouth projecting forward with virtually no chin.
What surprised scientists was that despite the shrinking of the brain "Flores man" still performed complex tasks like making miniature stone tools, hunting miniature Stegodon elephants and giant Komodo dragons and using fire to cook.