Ever since there has been debate whether or not the bones were actually from pygmies - even today there are pygmies on the island - and not a new species of human that lived between 120,000 and 10,000 years ago. One idea is that they suffered from microcephaly, a disorder that limits brain growth.
Today in the journal Science an analysis of three wrist bones of one of the fossil specimens (called LB1) led by Matthew Tocheri of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, and including Prof Morwood and colleagues in Indonesia and America shows that the bones are primitive and shaped differently compared to both the wrist bones of both humans and of Neanderthals, suggesting they do represent a different kind of human.
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