About 50,000 years ago, humans lost one of their last remaining hominin relatives: Homo floresiensis, informally nicknamed “Hobbit” because of its small size, lived on the Indonesian island of Flores and was barely more than a meter tall. Why the hobbits were so small compared to other homo representatives is one of the many mysteries of this species. Why this species more or less suddenly disappeared after over a million years of isolation on the volcanic island remained unclear.
