BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Team widens search for 'Hobbits'

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Team widens search for 'Hobbits': "eam widens search for 'Hobbits'
By Paul Rincon
BBC News science reporter


Lian Bua cave on Flores, Mike Morwood
We've got the prospect of having other new species of human on various parts of island South-East Asia
Mike Morwood, University of New England
The team behind the 'Hobbit' finds have been widening their search for remains of the strange little humans on Flores island - with tantalising results.

Since last year, the remains of at least nine individuals have been found in a cave on the Indonesian island.

The discovery team has now excavated more than 500 stone tools from another, much older, site about 40km away.

They believe a population ancestral to the Hobbits may have lived at this site, which is 850,000 years old.

'At Mata Menge there are hundreds and hundreds of in situ stone artefacts with Stegodon fossils,' Mike Morwood, director of the excavations, told the BBC News website."