A new climate record suggests that Homo floresiensis — pint-size human relatives nicknamed “hobbits” — endured thousands of years of intensifying drought before disappearing from their Indonesian island home of Flores. The prolonged drying may have stressed both the hobbits and the miniature elephant-like animals they hunted for food, researchers report December 8 in Communications Earth & Environment.
“This is the first good, quality climate record [for Flores],” says Nick Scroxton, a paleoclimatologist at Maynooth University in Ireland. While multiple factors may have driven the hobbits to extinction, he says, “the climate almost certainly played a big role.”
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