内容摘要：In Sao Paulo and at the Federal University of Sao Carlos, Pacheco studies the chemical changes that occur when a bone becomes a fossil. This allows her team to analyze when the sloth osteoderms were likely modified.

In Sao Paulo and at the Federal University of Sao Carlos, Pacheco studies the chemical changes that occur when a bone becomes a fossil. This allows her team to analyze when the sloth osteoderms were likely modified.

were even slightly shorter.“We did not expect that we would find smaller individuals from such an old site,” study co-author Yousuke Kaifu of the University of Tokyo said in an email.

The original hobbit fossils — named by the discoverers after characters in “The Lord of the Rings” — date back to between 60,000 and 100,000 years ago. The new fossils were excavated at a site called Mata Menge, about 45 miles from the cave where the first hobbit remains were uncovered.In 2016, researchers suspected the earlier relatives could be shorter than the hobbits after studying a jawbone and teeth collected from the new site. Further analysis of a tiny arm bone fragment and teeth suggests the ancestors were a mere 2.4 inches (6 centimeters) shorter and existed 700,000 years ago.“They’ve convincingly shown that these were very small individuals,” said Dean Falk, an evolutionary anthropologist at Florida State University who was not involved with the research.

, which spotlights the key numbers leading our coverage.The findings were published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

Researchers have debated how the hobbits – named Homo floresiensis after the remote Indonesian island of Flores – evolved to be so small and where they fall in the human evolutionary story. They’re thought to be among the last early human species to go extinct.

Scientists don’t yet know whether the hobbits shrank from an earlier, taller human species called Homo erectus that lived in the area, or from an even more primitive human predecessor. More research – and fossils – are needed to pin down the hobbits’ place in human evolution, said Matt Tocheri, an anthropologist at Canada’s Lakehead University.Maronite Catholic faithful attend a service on the Feast Day of St. George in St. George Church in the Maronite village of Kormakitis in the breakaway north of the ethnically divided Cyprus on Wednesday, April 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

Maronite Catholic faithful attend a service on the Feast Day of St. George in St. George Church in the Maronite village of Kormakitis in the breakaway north of the ethnically divided Cyprus on Wednesday, April 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)St. George Church in the Maronite village of of Kormakitis in the breakaway north of the ethnically divided Cyprus on Wednesday, April 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

St. George Church in the Maronite village of of Kormakitis in the breakaway north of the ethnically divided Cyprus on Wednesday, April 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.