'Hobbit' stirs scientific clash

A US-British team of scientists has challenged the idea that the tiny skeleton from Indonesia dubbed the "Hobbit" is a new human species.

Writing in Science magazine, the team presents an alternative theory that the remains could be those of a modern human with a brain disorder.

Their arguments appear in a technical critique of previous research into the Hobbit brain also published in Science.

But the authors of that earlier paper have vigorously defended their work.

The skeletal remains were discovered by an Australian-Indonesian research team in the cave of Liang Bua on the island of Flores in 2003.

After carefully analysing the bones, the group declared them to be those of a human species previously unknown to science, and to which they gave the classification Homo floresiensis. (The specimen is also sometimes referred to as LB1 after the cave in which it was found).

'Hobbit' stirs scientific clash