One of the smallest human relatives ever found has been unearthed in South Africa. Standing just 3 feet, 4.5 inches (1.03 meters) tall, the adult Paranthropus robustus, who died 2 million years ago, is even shorter than the famously diminutive "Lucy" from Ethiopia and the mysterious group of tiny "hobbits" from Indonesia — but researchers aren't sure why.
"These small early hominin individuals are reconstructed as shorter and stockier than modern human 'pygmies'," or groups of people with an average male height under 4 feet, 11 inches inches (150 centimeters), study lead author Travis Pickering, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, told Live Science in an email. The newly uncovered individual, designated SWT1/HR-2, "was probably similarly built — short and stocky," he said.
