Mysterious Fossils Science Still Can't Explain

Discovering new ancestors of modern humans is always fascinating, but sometimes completely baffling. When an Australian-Indonesian team discovered the fossils of a small hominid in 2003, they realized they would open new mysteries and questions about the human family. Indeed, their discovery, named Homo floresiensis, has forced researchers to rethink the human family history and the place of modern humans in it.

The hominid was diminutive, with samples averaging only a little over 3 feet tall, with big feet. Researchers began calling them Hobbits, which caused the Tolkien estate to threaten legal proceedings. Still, the nickname persisted, because what else are you going to call them?

So far, Homo floresiensis has only been found on one island in Indonesia, and records indicate they lived as recently as 50,000 years ago. Since the Hobbits are so close in the timeline to our own species, researchers are utterly baffled by them. Some contend that it's a totally separate species from humans, meaning Homo sapiens were not the only hominid species inhabiting the planet back in ancient times. This completely flies in the face of the old consensus that Homo sapiens were the only hominid species remaining when they took over the world. Others believe that the Hobbits were actually Homo sapiens who settled on Indonesia and, over centuries of inbreeding, developed dwarfism. Oddly, it seems like the second option has captured more steam among researchers, though if anybody digs up a shiny gold ring and dubs it their precious, all bets are off.

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