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The Story of a Hobbit

In September of 2003 a team of researchers, led by Michael J. Morwood and Peter Brown, both of the University of New England in Australia, made a remarkable discovery. While conducting a dig in a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, they discovered the fragmentary skull, pelvis and leg bones of a tiny hominid female. When their results were published in the journal Nature (Nature, Vol. 431, 28 October 2004) in 2004 they created an immediate sensation in the scientific community that quickly spread to the public at large. As the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy was at the mid-point of its release, the specimen - at a bit over three feet in height - became known as “the hobbit”. A fossil hominid find... [Read More]