Peter Brown, one of the discoverers of Homo floresiensis a k a the Hobbit (previous posts here), had a few interesting remarks in an article in today’s Oregon Daily Emerald:
Though the hobbit people were very small — the adult stood as tall as a 3-year-old human child and had a brain the size of a newborn human baby — they had incredible strength, Brown said.
“Chimpanzees have an arm strength four times that of a human; the hobbits were similarly as strong, we think,” Brown said. “You wouldn’t want to arm wrestle one, that’s for sure. It would probably snap your arm off.”
Since the discovery of the first female, a mostly complete skeleton, Brown’s team has found parts of six or seven others that are mostly the same as the first one, Brown said.
“We have found about half of the remains of a 3-year-old that is half-a-meter tall,” he said. “You could put its leg across an American $1 bill.”
Originally published February 8, 2006. Copyright 2006 Carl Zimmer.