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Study: Indonesia ‘hobbit’ fossils older than first thought

This 2012 photo provided by the Smithsonian Institution and the Liang Bua Team shows Liang Bua, a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, as the Liang Bua Team prepares for new archaeological excavations. In 2004, researchers reported that evolutionary cousins of modern humans, nicknamed hobbits, lived until fairly recently in the cave. Now a new study indicates they died out much earlier than originally believed. (Smithsonian Digitization Program Office and Liang Bua Team via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT This 2012 photo provided by the Smithsonian Institution and the Liang Bua Team shows Liang Bua, a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, as the Liang Bua Team prepares for new archaeological excavations. In 2004, researchers reported that evolutionary cousins of modern humans, nicknamed hobbits, lived until fairly recently in the cave. Now a new study indicates they died out much earlier than originally believed. (Smithsonian Digitization Program Office and Liang Bua Team via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

By Associated Press March 30, 2016 3 min read

NEW YORK (AP) – It was a spectacular discovery: Fossil remains in an Indonesian cave revealed a recent relative of modern humans that stood about 3 feet tall. The creatures were quickly nicknamed “hobbits.”

With evidence that they had survived to just 12,000 years ago, the hobbits appeared to have been the last of our companions on the human branch of the evolutionary tree to go extinct.

Now, a decade after they made headlines, they’ve lost that distinction. New investigations indicate they evidently disappeared much earlier – about 50,000 years ago, before Neanderthals did, for example.

The new date raises speculation about whether hobbits were doomed by the arrival of modern humans on their island. But it doesn’t change much about their scientific significance, said Matt Tocheri of Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

He and others wrote the new paper with three of the researchers who’d first reported the discovery in 2004. The new paper was released Wednesday by the journal Nature.