The teeth were certainly not equivalent to those of our species, which negates the theory that hobbits were somehow deformed modern humans and not a new species.

The results showed that the ancient human's teeth were part primitive and part modern.

'Early modern humans could have intermixed (interbred) with Asian Homo erectus at a small scale,' said project leader Associate Professor Yousuke Kaifu, of the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo.įor the study, published in PLOS ONE, Dr Kaifu and his colleagues compared Homo floresiensis teeth with those of 490 Homo sapiens individuals, as well as those from various ancient and now-extinct humans. It is even possible that there is a little bit of hobbit among today's human populations. The study suggests Homo floresiensis, aka 'the hobbit', shrank due to what is known as 'insular dwarfism' or 'the island effect', which happens when a population evolves in a limited-range environment where fewer resources and smaller territories are the norm. Ancient tiny people whose remains were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores evolved from large-bodied Homo erectus individuals from Asia, according to the first ever comprehensive analysis of their teeth.

Floris expanded vs evolved