Scientists hope for more hominids

Scientists hope for more hominids

Agencies, London

In an astonishing discovery that could rewrite the history of human evolution, scientists say they have found the skeleton of a new human species, a dwarf, marooned for eons in a tropical Lost World while modern man rapidly colonized the rest of the planet.

The finding on a remote Indonesian island has stunned anthropologists like no other in recent memory. It is a fundamentally new creature that bears more of a resemblance to fictional, barefooted hobbits than modern humans.

The scientists said in a journal Nature on Wednesday that they found the skull and incomplete skeleton of a creature known as LB1 in the sediments of a limestone cave at Liang Bua on the remote island of Flores in Indonesia last September.

Since then, fragments of bone from at least seven individuals have been found.

The partial skeleton of Homo floresiensis -- which is believed to be 18, 000 year-old -- found in a cave on the island of Flores, is of an adult female that was a meter (3 feet) tall, had a chimpanzee-sized brain and was substantially different from modern humans.

"It is an extraordinarily important find," Professor Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum in London, told a news conference on Wednesday. "It challenges the whole idea of what it is that makes us human."

Peter Brown of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, and his Indonesian colleagues made the discovery of the skull and other bones, and miniature tools in September 2003 while looking for records of modern human migration to Asia. They reported the finding in the Nature.

"Finding these hominins on an isolated island in Asia, and with elements of modern human behavior in tool making and hunting, is truly remarkable and could not have been predicted by previous discoveries," Brown said in a statement.

Local legends tell of hobbit-like creatures existing on islands long ago but there has been no evidence of them.

The hominin family tree, which includes humans and pre-humans, diverged from the chimpanzee line about 7 million years ago. Early African hominins walked upright, were small and had tiny brains.

The new species, dubbed "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 2 million years ago.

The new species became isolated on Flores and evolved into its dwarf form to conform with conditions, such as food shortages.