News Anthropology

Evolutionary Shrinkage: Stone Age Homo find offers small surprise

By Bruce Bower

- More than 2 years ago

Big evolutionary insights sometimes come in little packages. Witness the startling discovery, in a cave on the eastern Indonesian island of Flores, of the partial skeleton of a half-size Homo species that lived there at the same time that ancient Homo sapiens inhabited nearby regions.

LITTLE BIG FIND. The newly discovered Homo floresiensis skull (left) comes up short next to a Homo sapiens skull (right).