A Homo floresiensis skull (left) vs a Homo sapien skull.

Credit: Peter Brown

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JOHANNESBURG: South African anthropologists have discovered fossils of an extinct hobbit-like people on a Pacific Ocean island where they lived up to 3,000 years ago.

The former island cave inhabitants, some "as small as just over a metre", share features with the controversial Homo floresiensis specimens discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2004, said a statement from Johannesburg's Witwatersrand University.

The discovery, initially made by palaeoanthropologist Lee Berger while holidaying on the Micronesian island of Palau in 2006, is featured this week in the journal PLoS ONE.

Astounding finds

The subjects of the 2004 discovery, dubbed "hobbits" after author J.R.R Tolkien's pint-sized and hairy-footed fiction heroes, have been at the centre of a scientific argument over their classification. Some have argued they were a formerly unknown human species, while others maintain the tiny people are stunted modern humans.

"The Palauen fossils exhibit a surprising number of traits that were originally used to describe the hobbit as a unique species," said Berger. These included a small body size with large teeth, small faces and reduced chins.

After Berger discovered the fossils on holiday, he and a team including scientists from a number of U.S. universities, returned for further examinations on a grant from the National Geographic Society.

"What we found astounded our most experienced explorers, even the Palauen officials who accompanied us," said Berger. The extinct individuals are believed to have lived on the island between 1,400 and 3,000 years ago.

"The cave where Berger had found the original fossils was literally filled with tens of individuals. When excavated, the sand itself was practically made up of ground human bone," added Bonita de Klerk a doctoral student at Witwatersrand University and part of the team that excavated the bones.

A second cave has revealed another large cache of bones, said Berger, "It just demonstrates the great need for more exploration to be undertaken in these remote areas."