An international team behind the discovery of the hobbit species in Indonesia have now found what they believe to be the ancestors of the diminutive hominin - after finding skull fragments dated at 700,000 years old.
The remains of a female hobbit or homo floresiensis, were discovered in Liang Bua cave in 2003 - she is believed to be between 60 thousand and 100 thousand years old and would have stood at about a metre tall.
But the new fossil finds predate her by more than half a million years.
Brent Alloway of Auckland University is part of the team talks to Jesse Mulligan.
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