A long-lost cousin has been discovered, Homo floresiensis, or Flores Man. It's especially dramatic for a number of reasons. It's relatively recent, with the youngest specimen only 18,000 years old, but it is most closely related to Homo erectus. This species was also minute, only 3 feet tall, and tiny-brained. Here we have a group of small, specialized human relatives, living contemporaneously with Homo sapiens, on isolated islands in Indonesia. It's like discovering that Munchkins were real. You can read more here:

• Nature has special online section on Flores Man, with several articles on its discovery free to the public.
• Carl Zimmer has a summary of the significance of the discovery.

The LB1 cranium and mandible in lateral and three-quarter views, and cranium in frontal, posterior, superior and inferior views. Scalebar, 1cm.

A real pleasure of working in a historical science like biology is that sometimes you can be completely surprised by some unexpected, odd, and entirely accidental discovery. Flores Man is such a wild surprise.

A new human-like species - a dwarfed relative who lived just 18,000 years ago in the company of pygmy elephants and giant lizards - has been discovered in Indonesia.

Skeletal remains show that the hominins, nicknamed 'hobbits' by some of their discoverers, were only one metre tall, had a brain one-third the size of that of modern humans, and lived on an isolated island long after Homo sapiens had migrated through the South Pacific region.

"My jaw dropped to my knees," says Peter Brown, one of the lead authors and a palaeoanthropologist at the University of New England in Armidale, Australia.

The find has excited researchers with its implications—if unexpected branches of humanity are still being found today, and lived so recently, then who knows what else might be out there? The species' diminutive stature indicates that humans are subject to the same evolutionary forces that made other mammals shrink to dwarf size when in genetic isolation and under ecological pressure, such as on an island with limited resources.

Flores Man adds an interesting twist to our hominid phylogenies. As you can see in this diagram, we now have to add this slender thread from the great Homo erectus dispersal, a relic species that survived long after it's closest relatives.

Homo floresiensis in the context of he evolution and dispersal of the genus Homo. a,The new species as part of the Asian dispersals of the descendants of H. ergaster and H. erectus, with an outline of the descent of other Homo species provided for context. b, The evolutionary history of Homois becoming increasingly complex as new species are discovered. Homo floresiensis (left) is believed to be a long-term,isolated descendant ofJavanese H. erectus, but it could be a recent divergence. 1, H. ergaster/African erectus; 2, georgicus; 3, Javanese and Chinese erectus;4, antecessor; 5, cepranensis; 6, heidelbergensis; 7, helmei; 8, neanderthalensis; 9, sapiens; 10, floresiensis. Solid lines show probable evolutionary relationships; dashed lines, possible alternatives.

Cryptozoologists are going to have a ball. Henry Gee already has an article up, mentioning "that other species of recently extinct humans might be discovered on other isolated islands", and even mentioning the possibility of extant hominids.

The accompanying paper on the archaeology also shows the tools found with these little hominids; these weren't simple apes. They were making some wicked weapons and carving tools.

Despite its ability to make tools, though, Flores Man was small-brained, small even for its diminutive size.

The relative brain and body size of H. floresiensis. The dimensions of the skull and skeleton (LB1) described by Brown et al. fall well outside the extremes seen in H.sapiens and the ‘erectines’(a range of hominin species, of which H. erectus is the most familiar). LB1 is closer in size to, but even smaller than, the australopithecines, of which the best known example is Lucy. On various anatomical grounds,however, Brown et al. believe that LB1 represents a dwarfed H.erectus.

Look at that: 1m tall, with a 380 cm³ brain. And shaped stone tools. That is simply amazing.

There's also an article on Flores on the National Geographic site, including the nice reconstruction to the left.

National Geographic provided funding for the research, and are going to be airing a documentary on the subject next year.

They also summarize the little guy's life style:

The Flores people used fire in hearths for cooking and hunted stegodon, a primitive dwarf elephant found on the island. Although small, the stegodon still weighed about 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds), and would pose a significant challenge to a hunter the size of a three-year-old modern human child. Hunting must have required joint communication and planning, the researchers say.

Almost all of the stegodon fossils associated with the human artifacts are of juveniles, suggesting the tiny humans selectively hunted the smallest stegodons. The Flores humans' diets also included fish, frogs, snakes, tortoises, birds, and rodents.

Morwood MJ, Soejono RP, Roberts RG, Sutikna T, Turney CSM, Westaway KE, Rink WJ, Zhao J-x, vandenBergh GD, Rokus Awe Due, Hobbs DR, Moore MW, Bird MI, Fifield LK (2004) Archaeology and age of a new hominin from Flores in eastern Indonesia. Nature 431-435.

Brown P, Sutikna T, Morwood MJ, Soejono RP, Jatmiko, Saptomo EW, Rokus Awe Due (2004) A new small-bodied hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia. Nature 431:1055-1061.