The face of one of the stiff lineament in the human household Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree , Homo floresiensis , has been reconstruct by a little team of archeologist and 3D designers .
dub “ the hobbit ” because of its short height , H. floresiensisis an nonextant mintage of archaic human that stand around 1.1 beat ( 3 foot 7 inches ) in height . Remarkably , this specie walked the Earth at the same time as our species , Homo sapiens , and is thought to have only gone extinct around 50,000 old age ago shortly after we arrived in the area .
clay of this little fella were first discovered in 2003 on the Indonesian island of Flores . Since then , over a dozen other specimen have been uncovered on the island , but many unknown still border the enigmatical species .
A face-on view of theHomo floresiensisreconstruction.Image credit: Cicero Moraes (CC BY 4.0)
In a new study , the face ofH. floresiensiswas piece together by nearly canvas the metal money ’ skull , using its embodiment and body structure to make estimates about how soft tissue paper would have laid against the bone . The workplace bank on scans of LB1 , a nearly - utter underframe of the coinage line up in the Liang Bua cave of Flores .
The act offacial reconstructionusing just a skull is not an precise science , so some esthetic license is needed . This is because the physical body of the skull can only provide limited insights into how soft tissue , such as muscle , and fat , would actually appear on a person ’s font .
Furthermore , no one is certain what coloring hairH. floresiensishad , nor the extent of its hairiness , so some features have to be approximated with civilize guesses .
The place ofH. floresiensisin thehuman class treeis uncertain , but their skulls bear some resemblance to another well - hump member , Homo erectus .
The team who discoveredH. floresiensisoriginally proposed that a population ofH. erectustraveled to Flores from Java . Over 100 of thousands of eld , the universe shrink in size of it as a result of insular dwarfism , a unconscious process in which animals evolve to become smaller when their universe ’s range is limited to a small-scale environment .
That ’s just one theory , however . Anotheridea – which has been widely disputed – is that the stiff ofH. floresiensisare simplyHomo sapienswith a congenital health upset such as microcephaly , which lead in a small skull .
There have even been dubiousness about whether the species can really be considered a member of theHomogenus as it bears many “ archaic ” characteristic that are more akin to early human ancestors , such asAustralopithecus .
To make matters even hazier , scientist have not obtained DNA from a skeleton ofH. floresiensisso far . Attemptswere madein 2006 , but their travail fall categorical .
For now , this specie remains as mysterious as ever . However , thanks to this recent 3D reconstruction , at least we can now put a face to a name .
The survey , which has not been peer review , is published in the e - bookOrtogOnline vol . 4 .
