This lecture was held at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology by Professor Janet M. Monge.

Homo floresiensis is the smallest adult skeletal in the whole of human evolutionary history. Found in 2003, the “hobbit” or “halfling” was so named because of its diminutive size.

It remains to be answered if this small ancient humanoid is an example of a diseased individual of our own species homo sapiens, or if it is a new species within the human lineage that eventually became extinct when modern humans arrived on the island of Flores.

As recently as half a year ago, reanalysis of the cave deposits forced a new time frame for the sediments and fossils within the cave.