Researchers recreate the face of the real-life ‘Hobbit’ of Flores

The face of this long-lost human ancestor has been painstakingly recreated from fossil remains using computer software. Evidence of the mysterious ‘Hobbits’ of Flores, an island in Indonesia, was first unearthed in a cave back in 2003 – a discovery that would go on to become the topic of much controversy and debate. Named Homo floresiensis, these pint-sized hominids are now believed to be a previously undiscovered species of human which died out somewhere around 50,000 years ago.

Now in a bid to bring the ancient inhabitants of Flores back to life, a team of experts has used special software to create an approximation of what they might have looked like. The study combined computer tomography (CT) scans of actual skulls with scans of chimpanzees to create a full picture of the face because the fossils themselves were incomplete.

“We deformed [both] to adapt them to the structure of the skull of H. floresiensis and interpolated the data to get an idea of what [the hobbit’s] face could look like,” co-researcher Cicero Moraes told Live Science.

Love me spells that work

“The [hobbit] skull is almost complete, missing small parts in the region of the glabella (the part of the forehead directly between the eyebrows) and nasal bone, but fortunately it was possible to design them with the help of anatomical deformation.”

You can check out the final result in the video below.