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http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,11207895%255E663,00.htmlDetails of the discovery by scientists working on a remote Indonesian island, who say they have uncovered the bones of a human dwarf species marooned for eons...
Mini-human find
Michelle Pountney
28oct04
A NEW species of human "hobbits" who grew barely a metre tall has been discovered on a remote Indonesian island.
Stunned Australian scientists found the skeleton of a fully grown female, which has led to the classification of a new species of ancient human.
The chance find has astonished paleontologists because the human-like dwarf species lived as recently as 12,000 years ago -- and modern man is believed to have colonised the area as long as 50,000 years ago.
The scientists have pieced together an image of a hairless, dark-skinned dwarf species with a head the size of a grapefruit, a retreating forehead, sunken eyes, a flat nose, large teeth, and virtually no chin.
They found the skeleton in a cave on the island of Flores in September last year and have since found bones from other mini-humans, now scientifically classified as homo floresiensis.
"We now have the remains of at least seven hobbit-sized individuals at the cave site so the skeleton cannot be some kind of freak," said Professor Bert Roberts, from Wollongong University.
Scientists regard Flores -- between Bali and Timor -- as a kind of Lost World.
They believe the hobbits fit in with other bizarre extinct fauna from the island, including a dwarf form of the primitive elephant known as the stegodon, full-sized komodo dragons and giant lizards.
They believe a catastrophic volcanic eruption probably wiped out the tiny race.
Fully grown hobbit adults would have been about the size of a modern four-year-old.
The skeleton also revealed the species had short legs and long arms.
They had chimpanzee-sized brains but used stone tools and hunted like modern humans.
Scientists believe the adult female was about 30 years old and probably died of natural causes about 18,000 years ago. She probably slumped into a muddy pool, and was covered quickly by sediment.
They think she descended from the full-sized homo erectus from which homo sapiens, or modern human, is also descended.
Professor Roberts said it was almost certain that humans would have run into their hobbit cousins on the island. "These people were during our time. We would have bumped into these people looking completely different and thought 'What are they?' "
Associate Professor Peter Brown, from the University of New England, said the skeleton had profound ramifications.
"If you told me an alien space craft had landed in a field in Flores I would have been less surprised," he said.
"This overturns everything I have thought. It begs the question -- what else are we going to find?
"People of this body size were supposed to be extinct three million years ago. We missed them by so little in time. (In evolutionary terms) they were alive yesterday."