Frodo In The Family

"Hobbit" declared a species

'A tiny skeleton discovered in Indonesia four years ago is definitely that of a new species of human, scientists say.

The study by researchers at Florida State University compared the skull of the 3-foot tall Homo floresiensis, discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores, with others and ruled out the possibility of it being an underdeveloped example of Homo sapiens.

The "hobbit," as Homo floresiensis has been nicknamed by scientists, lived on Flores 18,000 years ago, isolated from other human species. The study, which appears in this week's Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, suggests that the way a species' brain develops is of equal importance to its size in human evolution.'