Researchers discovered three hominin fossils dating to 700,000 years from Mata Menge in the So’a Basin of central Flores of Indonesia.
With this, Scientists have come up with two theories to describe their origin.
The first argues that Homo floresiensis was a dwarfed descendant of early Asian Homo erectus.
An extinct human species, Homo erectus may have lived between 100,000 and 1.6 million years ago.
The second theory suggests that Homo floresiensis is a descendant of a more ancient hominin from Africa like Homo habilis or the famous ‘Lucy’ (Australopithecus afarensis).
They were also smaller in stature and existed before Homo erectus.
The new study found that the three fossils had slightly smaller jaws and teeth than Homo floresiensis.
This suggests that their small body size evolved early in the history of Flores hominins.
These hominins likely witnessed a drastic body size reduction from large-bodied Asian Homo erectus sometime between 1 and 0.7 million years ago.