http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/160330-hobbits-humans-flores-cave-older-species/
>Thousands of years ago, hobbits roamed a lush, green land. They gathered food, took shelter in cozy holes in the earth, and even battled dragons. This is no fantasy epic—it’s the likely lifestyle of an ancient human relative that thrived on the island of Flores in Indonesia.
>Discovered in 2003 in Liang Bua cave, Homo floresiensis stood about three and a half feet (1.1 meters) tall and weighed around 75 pounds (35 kilograms). Nicknamed for the diminutive heroes in J.R.R. Tolkien's famous novels, the real-life hobbits made stone tools and might have survived predatory attacks from komodo dragons. Even more exciting to anthropologists, the discovery team originally estimated that these “halflings” lived as recently as 12,000 years ago, which would mean that they outlived Neanderthals and might well have crossed paths with modern humans.
>However, a fresh look at the site where the fossils were found puts a twist on the tale: The latest evidence suggests that hobbits vanished from the island far earlier than thought, casting the chances of a cross-species encounter in a new light.
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>“Since 2007, a lot more of the cave has been excavated,” says study co-author Matthew Tocheri of Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Researchers initially used chemical clues in the soil around the fossils to figure out when layers of sediment were laid down and thus how old the bones and tools found inside them must be. In the latest work, the team found that the layers of sediment in the cave were not all evenly deposited and so varied widely in age even at similar depths.
>The new analysis, published today in Nature, asserts that the skeletal remains of H. floresiensis are more likely between 100,000 and 60,000 years old, and their stone tools date from as far back as 190,000 years to around 50,000 years ago. That suggests these evolutionary cousins did not exist for long after modern humans arrived in the region some 50,000 years ago.
>“At the time of the initial discovery, not enough of the older deposits had been exposed, and this led to an error in the interpretation of how the dates obtained at that time applied to the sediments that contained the hobbit remains,” says Tocheri, who received funding from the National Geographic Society's Waitt Grants Program for this work.
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Hobbit genocide best day of my life
There was like one good fossil and a bunch of fragments, I doubt it was a different species.
>>36004
Its a matter of debate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis#Bone_structure
>>36007
I still stick with the side that it was diseased or otherwise fucked up or its inconclusive. I think having more fossils than LB1 would shed some better light on the whole issue.
>>35978
> and even battled dragons.
April Fools'?!
>>36042
komono dragons, dipshit
>>36044
Were they at least bigger than the hobbits? This is the biggest double lie I've ever seen or my name isn't Christie Spence (which it isn't)...
>>36045
an adult male komono dragon can grow up to 8.5 ft and weigh up to 200lbs
>>36044
You mean komodo? They got putrefaction and can run up to 35 mph if I'm not mistaken.
>>36045
The komodo dragons were larger than usual due to enviromental conditions, unlike the warm blooded creatures stuck on the island that got smaller than usual.
>>36064
>not dressing your dragons in a kimono
Manlets BTFO once again
>>36894
But Anon, they were killed off by other manlets.