When people hear the word “Hobbit,” they think of fantasy — Tolkien, Middle-earth, fiction. But in 2003, archaeologists uncovered something that felt impossible: a real human species barely over one ...

A massive, centuries-long drought may have driven the extinction of the “hobbits” of Flores. Climate records preserved in cave formations show rainfall plummeted just as the small human species ...

The extinct archaic human species Homo floresiensis, formerly of Indonesia, left behind fully-grown adult skeletons that famously measure at a diminutive height of three and a half feet tall, which ...

The small-brained, small-statured species, just about 3.5ft tall, likely lived on the island as recently as 50,000 years ago, but then mysteriously vanished. Previous research suggested their ...

Archaeologists have found compelling evidence that the early humans who inhabited the Indonesian island of Flores were wiped out by climate change. Homo floresiensis, dubbed the “hobbits” for their ...

An international team of scientists, including the University of Wollongong (UOW), has found compelling evidence that a changing climate played a role in the extinction of the early human species Homo ...

(THE CONVERSATION) Until Homo floresiensis was discovered, scientists assumed that the evolution of the human lineage was defined by bigger and bigger brains. Via a process called encephalization, ...

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) This proportionally bigger brain is what anthropologists argued enabled us and our ...

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Tesla Monson, Western Washington University and Andrew Weitz, Western Washington ...