The discovery of a 700,000-year-old arm bone fossil and two teeth on the Indonesian island of Flores is shedding light on how the tiny, now-extinct human Homo floresiensis evolved.
The remains of the smallest adult arm bone in the fossil record and two teeth, found on the Indonesia n island of Flores , were dated to be 700,000 years old.
While this change in height was unexpected to archaeologists, the discovery of the bone and some new teeth do solve the long-standing question of wheremade its first appearance in the archaeological record with the 2003 discovery of a nearly complete, 106-centimetre female skeleton in Liang Bua, a cave on the western side of Flores Island in Indonesia.
Now the discovery of a partial upper arm bone, the smallest adult human arm bone in the fossil record so far, and two more teeth at Mata Menge has revealed that thisThe Mata Menge humerus fragment shown at the same scale as the humerus of Homo floresiensis from Liang Buafossils has been explained by what's called "island dwarfism" or "insular dwarfism".
"It is very fortuitous that teeth and jaws seem to fossilise pretty well, because they are pretty clearly reflective of taxonomy," Professor Larson said."Teeth have lots of goofy little grooves and peaks that seem to probably serve some purpose, but also seem to be very species-specific so that you can gather a lot of information about heritage as well as function.", whatever their size, made it to the island of Flores in the first place.
There is evidence in the genetic makeup of modern humans in the region which suggests there may have been some genetic intermingling between these two species.
Homo Floresiensis Ancient Human Flores Indonesia Archaeology
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