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'Hobbits' not a different species, say scientists By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 7:01pm GMT 03/01/2008 The long-running debate about the existence of so-called hobbits of Indonesia has taken a new turn with a study that suggests these ancient people were not an unusual species of human but modern humans with a growth disorder. Scientists believe the "hobbit" had the same growth condition as Paddy Ryan The work, if confirmed, suggests that there could be up to around 100 documented such "hobbits" in the world today, the people who have the mutation that leads to them being normally proportioned...

Indonesia's Lost World: Shaking Up the Family Tree October 28, 2004 by David Keys Homo floresiensis skull (© Peter Brown) New archaeological discoveries by Australian and Indonesian scientists on the Indonesian island of Flores are revealing that until at least 13,000 to 12,000 years ago, modern humans--our species, Homo sapiens--shared this planet with a totally different species of human being--a three-foot-high dwarf hominid with physical features usually seen as dating from 1.5 to 4 million years ago. The scientists, mainly from Australia's University of New England and University of Wollongong, have found the skeletal remains of up to seven individuals...

Bones of ContentionIs a small, 18,000-year-old skeleton the older cousin of modern-day Pygmies—or a new human species? BY SIMON ELEGANT | RAMPASASA JOHN STANMEYER FOR TIMESMALL WORLD: Rampasasa resident Anggalus Jalur, 55, stands just 130 cm tall "In those days we ate our meat raw, like animals." The speaker is Viktor Jurubu, an Indonesian farmer in his 60s, who, in his T shirt and sarong, looks little like the cavemen he's describing. Except for his height, which is about 140 cm. In the world of anthropology, Jurubu's small size is big news because he and his 246 fellow villagers of...

Ancient islanders get a leg up Bruce Bower From San Juan, Puerto Rico, at the Paleoanthropology Society and Society for American Archaeology meeting Fossils of a humanlike species dubbed Homo floresiensis that lived on the Pacific island of Flores between 18,000 and 12,000 years ago recently grabbed headlines because scientists deduced that this creature stood no more than 1 meter tall and possessed a surprisingly small brain. Nonetheless, H. floresiensis packed considerable weight on its diminutive frame and possessed far stronger legs than people do today, says William L. Jungers of the State University of New York at Stony Brook....

Scientists in Australia have found a new species of hobbit-sized humans who lived about 18,000 years ago on an Indonesian island in a discovery that adds another piece to the complex puzzle of human evolution. The partial skeleton of Homo floresiensis, found in a cave on the island of Flores, is of an adult female that was a metre (3 feet) tall, had a chimpanzee-sized brain and was substantially different from modern humans. It shared the isolated island to the east of Java with miniature elephants and Komodo dragons. The creature walked upright, probably evolved into its dwarf size because...

Following on from the previous article, The First Boat People, we know that Sahul, the original name of Australia during prehistoric times, was settled around 40,000 years ago. Although this date is disputed it is now universally accepted as the most accurate and reliable. But who were these first people and from where did they come? Could humans have developed in Australia at the same time they were developing in Africa? Was there a wave of immigrants or only one founding population? And where does Homo floriensis fit into this picture, if at all? It can quite comfortably be stated...

Neanderthal-human hybrid 'a myth' Monday, 10 December 2007 Jennifer Viegas Discovery News This 29,000 year old skull belonged to a hominid with slightly heavier eyebrows than an average person. But this is not enough to convince anthropologists it's evidence of a human-Neanderthal hybrid (Source: Dan Grigorescu) Did modern humans interbreed with Neanderthals and, if so, did the mating result in a half-human, half-Neanderthal hybrid? The answer is possibly 'yes' to the interbreeding but 'no' to the hybrid, according to the authors of a new study that is already making waves among anthropologists. At the centre of the study, published online...

The accidental death of an elephant which had become bogged in mud 200,000 years ago led to the perfect preservation of its skeleton -- and a remarkable scientific discovery... the skeleton of the prehistoric ancestor to the modern Asian elephant which was fossilised in an abandoned sand quarry in East Java, Indonesia. The ancient bones were discovered after land collapsed at the sand quarry on the Indonesian island, adjacent to the Solo River, which killed two men in April. Researchers from the University of Wollongong in Australia and the Geological Survey Institute spent four weeks excavating the bones of the...