'Hobbit' humans theory

Discovery reveals ancient humans only stood about 1m tall 700 OOO years ago.

The discovery of a tiny arm bone suggests that an ancient human dubbed "hobbits" only shrank down to their diminutive size after they arrived on an Indonesian island a million years ago, scientists said on Tuesday.

Much about the pint-sized Homo floresiensis has been shrouded in mystery since the first fossils were found on the island of Flores in 2003.

These tool-using hominins are believed to have been living on the island as recently as 50 000 years ago, when our own species, Homo sapiens, was already walking the earth, including in Australia.

From some 60,000-year-old teeth and a jawbone found in an island cave, scientists had previously estimated the hobbits were around 1.06m tall.