Australian researchers back hobbit claims.

ABC News Online
Last Update: Monday, October 2, 2006. 5:00pm (AEST)

Flores man ... a model of a skull from the newly found species of
hobbit-sized humans that lived about 18,000 years ago in Indonesia.
(Reuters)
Australian researchers back hobbit claims
Researchers from the Australian National University (ANU) are backing
claims that the discovery of the so-called hobbit in Indonesia does
represent a new species of human.
In 2003, Australian scientists unearthed the remains of a hobbit-like
species, with adults about the height of a three-year-old child, in a
cave on a remote island in Indonesia.
In a new paper, ANU researchers reject claims that the skeleton of a
hobbit-like species was simply a very short human with a rare brain
disease.

ANU Professor Colin Groves says after analysing the evidence, he has no
doubt the discovery represents a new species of human.
"What is particularly interesting about it is it survived in isolation
through those two-million-years or so in eastern Indonesia and its
existence was quite unsuspected until very recently," he said.
Professor Groves says the evidence speaks for itself.

"Aspects of the shape of the skull are completely outside modern
humans," he said.

"The shape of the earhole in the skull, the shape of the forehead and
the back of the skull, all these things are way outside.

"The limb proportions are quite different from those seen in any modern
humans that I've ever heard of."