- There’s a new addition to the family tree: an extinct species of human that’s been found in the Philippines.
- It’s known as Homo luzonensis, after the site of its discovery on the country’s largest island Luzon.
- Its physical features are a mixture of those found in very ancient human ancestors and in more recent people.
- That could mean primitive human relatives left Africa and made it all the way to South-East Asia, something not previously thought possible.
- The find shows that human evolution in the region may have been a highly complicated affair, with three or more human species in the region at around the time our ancestors arrive.
- One of these species was the diminutive “Hobbit” – Homo floresiensis – which survived on the Indonesian island of Flores until 50,000 years ago.
