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[shaun]

Although she lived 18,000 years ago, scientists believe her relatives survived for thousands more years on the island of Flores.

And experts have not ruled out the possibility of her descendants, or other unknown human species, still hiding in the impenetrable forests and cave systems of South-East Asia.

Mythical tales abound in the region of a race of little people that dwells on the islands of Indonesia.

Dutch explorers, who colonised Flores 100 years ago, were told colourful stories of a human-like creature local inhabitants called 'ebu gogo'.

Like the hominid, whose skeletal remains have excited scientists around the world, they stood about 3ft tall.

The tales described how they could be heard 'murmuring' to one another, and how, parrot-fashion, they repeated back words spoken to them.

Dr Henry Gee, senior editor of the leading scientific journal Nature, said the scientists who made the new discovery were now having to think again about the source of these stories.

"Until they found this creature they would have dismissed them as tales of hobbits and leprechauns, but no longer,'' he told a news conference in London.

The new human, named Homo floresiensis, is a dwarf-sized descendent of another primitive species that left Africa about two million years ago.

A grapefruit-sized skull and partial skeleton of a female specimen was unearthed at a cave site called Liang Bua.

The Australian team, led by Dr Peter Brown from the University of New England in Armidale, has now found several other specimens at the same site.

The find has been hailed as one of the most important human origin discoveries of the past 100 years.

Professor Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, said: "This has really rewritten the text books. To have this creature present less than 20,000 years ago is astonishing.

"In terms of the bigger questions of human evolution as a whole, and how complex it was and how much we still have to learn, I cannot underestimate its importance.''

Together with the bones, the researchers uncovered a number of delicate stone tools thought to have been used by Homo floresiensis.

The creatures were not the only unusual inhabitants of the island. Besides 'hobbits', elephants the size of ponies and rats as big as dogs roamed the island and were probably hunted by Homo floresiensis.
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oh my!

[connie]

Elephants the size of ponies!

What an incredibly amusing mental image.

[Mr.Tim]

holy wowzers !

[Tav]

Are the elephants/rats still alive? Or can anyone find any info on them on Google? I just got a lot of crap to do with this news story/elephants in oaklhoma and some ebay pages...the usual lol.

[shaun]

this stuff was on aol news.

all those things are dead. i'm guessing...