The discovery of Homo floresiensis on the island of Flores ignited a longstanding debate regarding the evolutionary mechanisms responsible for the taxon’s unique small body size and mosaic morphology as compared to other Homo variants. Homo floresiensis’ reduced cranial capacity combined with dissimilar gracile and robust postcranial features became a point of contention in finding a clear identity in the Homo pathology. Two primary hypotheses have been proposed to explain this divergence: the Phyletic Dwarfism Hypothesis, which posits descent from Homo erectus via insular dwarfism driven by deterministic selection, and the Genetic Drift Hypothesis, which attributes its unique morphology to neutral evolutionary processes in a small, isolated population. This study quantitatively tests these competing hypotheses using a multivariate morphometric approach applied to 3D landmark data from the H. floresiensis holotype (LB1) and comparative samples of H. erectus, H. habilis, Australopithecus, H. sapiens, and great apes. Using Brownian motion simulations of genetic drift, allometric analyses, and applying tests of morphological integration this paper aims to reveal a more precise evolutionary history of Homo floresiensis.
Sameer Meralli (2025) studied this question.