Members of a species of extinct hominin presumed to have lived on the Indonesian island of Flores and maybe elsewhere from 94,000 until 18,000 years ago, well within the time range of modern humans. Skeletal remains of an adult female and other individuals were found at the Liang Bua cave on Flores in 2004 by a team of Australian and Indonesian anthropologists. The species was around one third the size of modern humans, made tools, hunted dwarf elephants and other animals, cooked food, and is thought to have descended from H. erectus, a much older and larger hominin that may also be the ancestor of modern humans; the small size of H. floresiensis was perhaps the result of island dwarfing. Given that no H. erectus remains have been found on Flores, an alternative theory is that the species arrived on the island already small, perhaps having descended much earlier from a common ancestor of H. erectus.
