A fossilised left leg unearthed in South Africa belongs to one of the smallest adult hominins ever discovered – smaller even than the so-called “hobbit”, Homo floresiensis.

The diminutive hominin was a member of the species Paranthropus robustus. This was one of several species of Paranthropus, a group of ape-like hominins that shared the African landscape with the earliest representatives of our human genus, Homo, between about 2.7 and 1.2 million years ago. Paranthropus had heavily built skulls that housed small brains and large teeth – which some species…