IN A hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Or should that be: in a hole in the ground there lived a pygmy human with microcephaly? According to a study of dwarfing in a range of mammals, the supposed new species Homo floresiensis announced in 2004 was in fact a modern human with a pathological condition.
The hole, a limestone cave on the island of Flores, Indonesia, contained the remains of a tiny female, apparently a new species of early human. Named H. floresiensis by the discoverers, she quickly became known as “the hobbit”. However, when the find…
