Reach: Summer 2009

Professor Kieran McNulty and hiscolleague established that Homo floresiensis was distinct fromHomo sapiens. Only three feet tall, Homo floresiensis had a brainabout one-third of the size of a human's, but could make stonetools. Photo by Kelly MacWilliams.

That is the finding of anthropology assistant professor Kieran McNulty—named this year a McKnight Land-Grant Professor—and his colleague Karen Baab of Stony Brook University in New York, published online in the Journal of Human Evolution. The researchers used cutting-edge 3D modeling methods to compare the cranial features of the 18,000-year-old Homo floresiensis with those of a simulated fossil human of similar size to determine conclusively if the species was distinct from modern humans—and it was.

[Homo floresiensis] is "the most exciting discovery in perhaps the last 50 years," says McNulty. "The specimens have skulls that resemble something that died a million years earlier, and other body parts are reminiscent of our three-million-year-old human ancestors, yet they lived until very recently—contemporaries with modern humans."

One theory is that the species underwent a process of size reduction after branching off from Homo erectus, one of modern-day humanity's ancestors, an even more primitive species.

Learn more about the "hobbit fossils" at: http://reach.cla.umn.edu/hobbit