Extinct giant storks could have fed on human "hobbits" on an Indonesian island, new research shows.

Were ‘hobbit’ humans killed off by giant storks?

A new species of giant stork that fed off human-like hobbits on a prehistoric Indonesian island is fresh evidence of a topsy-turvy parallel universe that once existed.

The previously unknown stork, an extinct type of marabou, stood 1.8 metres (6 feet) and weighed about 16 kilograms, paleontologist and discoverer Dr. Hanneke Meijer told the Star on Thursday.

“Fly? Not very well, I think. They wouldn’t have gone very far if they could even get off the ground. But I don’t think they needed to fly. They were the top predator of that ecosystem.”

That ecosystem was the isolated island of Flores, Indonesia, about 17,000 years ago. It was populated by giant rats, pygmy elephants and Homo floresiensis, a hobbit-sized hominid whose young would likely have been a feast for the giant storks.

“There’s no direct evidence for that,” admitted Meijer. “But juvenile hobbits and juvenile komodo dragons and giant rats would have been in the same size range.”

What would kill off something at the top of the food chain?

The entire ecosystem of Flores collapsed around 15,000 years ago, most likely after modern humans arrived by boat.

“There was a volcanic eruption in Bali and there had been a climatic change, but we know modern humans were living nearby and their arrival has meant catastrophe wherever else they came.”

Modern humans tended to turn up with cats, dogs, pigs and a sense of entitlement that destroyed the original habitat of places that had evolved in isolation, she explained.

“This had been a parallel universe that existed alongside our own.”

Similar in size to an ostrich, the giant marabou in Pleistocene Flores had a different skeleton, particularly in the lower leg bones, said Meijer. When she first spotted the big bones in the Liang Bua cave, “I knew it was something special.”

The cave first achieved worldwide renown in 2004 with the discovery of Homo floresiensis, a dwarf human species dubbed “hobbits.”



Because they were nearly flightless, the giant storks existed only on Flores. Studying their evolution and extinction can give the modern world not just a picture of the past, but answers to survival in the face of climate change, Meijer said.

The study is published in the November issue of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

More from The Star & Partners

More News

Top Stories