Until about 60,000 years ago, diminutive hominin cousins, Homo floresiensis<\/i> (affectionately nicknamed Hobbits for obvious reasons), shared the island of Flores with Komodo dragons, pygmy elephants, and giant rats.<\/p>\n
Based on the presence of hominin and pygmy elephant bones in the same layers of cave sediment, it originally looked like the Hobbits had hunted and butchered dwarf elephants\u2014an impressive feat for such a tiny hominin. But according to University of T\u00fcbingen anthropologist Elizabeth Veatch and her colleagues, it was the Komodo dragons that were the hunters, while the Hobbits only showed up to scavenge what was left.<\/p>\n
If Veatch and her colleagues are right, their findings may challenge some of the assumptions we\u2019ve made about Homo floresiensis<\/em>\u2014and about which hominin species was the first to venture into the wider\u00a0world beyond Africa.<\/p>\n Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n Comments<\/a><\/p>\n Source: Tech – Ars Technica<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If Homo floresiensis wasn’t a fire-using hunter, its origins could be different than we 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