homo floresiensis

A detailed analysis of the feet of Homo floresiensis — the miniature hominins who lived on a remote island in eastern Indonesia until 18,000 years ago — may help settle a question hotly debated among paleontologists: how similar was this population to modern humans? A new research paper, featured on the cover of the current [...]

Since the reporting of the so-called “hobbit” fossil from the island of Flores in Indonesia, debate has raged as to whether these remains are of modern humans (Homo sapiens), reduced, for some reason, in stature, or whether they represent a new species, Homo floresiensis. Reporting in this week’s PLoS ONE in a study funded by [...]