http://discovermagazine.com/2009/the-brain-2/28-what-happened-to-hominids-who-were-smarter-than-us
The Boskops were a race of (now extinct) hominids that had remarkably Tarutaru-like features:
- Large heads
- Childlike faces
- Height is not discussed in this article, but in another one I read about the Boskops, it was conjectured that they were indeed a bit shorter than modern humans.
Discover Magazine article wrote:
In a classroom with 35 big-headed, baby-faced Boskop kids, you would likely encounter five or six with IQ scores at the upper range of what has ever been recorded in human history.
Sounds a bit like some precocious Tarutaru I've met in cutscenes.