We are homosapiens, but before our species walked this Earth there were many others that came before. One of those is called Homo floresiensis and they were the smallest species of ours to ever live.
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00:00We are Homo sapiens, but before our species walked the earth, there were many others that
00:08came before.
00:09One of those is called Homo floresiensis, and they were our smallest cousins.
00:13Experts believe they only stood around three and a half feet tall, and they hunted and
00:17gathered as far back as a million years ago, living alongside our species in some areas
00:22as recently as just 50,000 years ago.
00:25However, an adult bone fragment found in 2013 raises some questions about them, as
00:30it is extremely small even for this tiny species.
00:33Experts say the creature the bone belonged to likely only stood three feet three inches
00:37tall, with the researchers saying about it, this 700,000 year old adult humerus is not
00:42just shorter than that of H. floresiensis, it is the smallest upper arm bone known from
00:47the hominin fossil record worldwide.
00:49They say this could point them on the path to better understanding their species.
00:53One that the researchers say is poorly understood.
00:56Archaeologist Adam Brum says, the best theory at the moment is that this species evolved
01:00when a group of the early Asian hominins known as Homo erectus somehow became isolated on
01:05this remote Indonesian island, perhaps one million years ago, and underwent a dramatic
01:09body size reduction over time.