TIME.com: Hot on the 'Hobbit' Trail -- Page 1

TIME.com: Hot on the 'Hobbit' Trail -- Page 1: "Hot on the 'Hobbit' Trail
Australian scientists spark controversy with a discovery of small bones suggesting the existence of a prehistoric 'hobbit'-like species
By MICHAEL LEMONICK
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Posted Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2005
The world of paleontology was thrown into an uproar last year when Australian scientists Michael Morwood and Peter Brown, claimed they’d found fossils from an entirely new (though presumably extinct) human species, which they dubbed Homo floresiensis , on the Indonesian island of Flores. For one thing, the diminutive creatures, nicknamed “hobbits” by the scientists, were alive as recently as 13,000 years ago—meaning they survived tens of thousands of years longer than the Neanderthals, which we thought were our last surviving cousins. They might even have lived into modern times, if local legends of a race of forest-dwelling little people are to be believed."