hobbits discovered. no, really. i'm not kidding.

das bbc reports today in 'Hobbit' joins human family tree that investigators have discovered a teensy human relative lived - and might remain somewhere - on the island of flores in indonesia.

Scientists have discovered a new and tiny species of human that lived in Indonesia at the same time our own ancestors were colonising the world.

The new species - dubbed "the Hobbit" due to its small size - lived on Flores island until at least 12,000 years ago.

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Details of the sensational find are described in the journal Nature.

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At first, the researchers thought it was the body of a child. But further investigation revealed otherwise.

Wear on the teeth and growth lines on the skull confirm it was an adult, features of the pelvis identify it as female and a leg bone confirms that it walked upright like we do.

The 18,000-year-old specimen, known as Liang Bua 1 or LB1, has been assigned to a new species called Homo floresiensis. It was about one metre tall with long arms and a skull the size of a large grapefruit.

The researchers have since found remains belonging to six other individuals from the same species.

this is some wild stuff. no kidding - keep reading, they lived recently.

LB1 shared its island with a pony-sized dwarf elephant called Stegodon, a golden retriever-sized rat, giant tortoises and huge lizards - including Komodo dragons.

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H. floresiensis probably evolved from another species called Homo erectus, whose remains have been discovered on the Indonesian island of Java.

Homo erectus may have arrived on Flores about one million years ago, evolving its tiny physique in the isolation provided by the island.

What is surprising about this is that Homo erectus must have made it to Flores by boat. Yet building craft for travel on open water is traditionally thought to have been beyond the intellectual abilities of this member of the human family.

serioiusly. i hope this isn't boring the shit out of you, because it is one of the most remarkable discoveries of the 20th century.

Professor Stringer said the find "rewrites our knowledge of human evolution." He added: "To have [this species] present 12,000 years ago is frankly astonishing."

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The presence of Stegodon remains - particularly the teeth of juveniles - in the same deposits as H. floresiensis suggests they may have hunted these dwarf elephants. Some smaller animal remains in Liang Bua cave are charred, perhaps by cooking.

Miniature stone tools - just the right size for the diminutive H. floresiensis to have made and used - have been found at the cave. Their sophistication has surprised some scientists given the human's small brain size of 380cc (around the same size as a chimpanzee).

"The whole idea that you need a particular brain size to do anything intelligent is completely blown away by this find," Dr Gee commented.

but this is the best part:

Because the remains are relatively recent and not fossilised, scientists are even hopeful they might yield DNA. Genetic information from this descendent of Homo erectus could provide an entirely new perspective on the evolution of the human lineage.

one of the grand questions is how related h. erectus is to our own species: we have no d.n.a. evidence on the subject - at least, we didn't before!

read the article - i left out all the juicy bits about possible modern survivals of h. floresiensis, for example...