Island's ancient dwarf men were not hobbits, but cretins

A new war of words has broken out over the diminutive "hobbit", whose fossilised remains were found in a cave on a remote Indonesian island four years ago.

Ecstatic Australian scientists insisted at the time that they had unearthed powerful evidence of a previously-undiscovered human species who had lived on the island while mankind as we know it continued to develop in the "outside world".

But now an opposing group of Australian researchers say the tiny people on the island of Flores were not a separate branch of the human family tree after all, but were stunted Homo sapiens - early modern man - who did not grow because of iodine deficiency while in the womb.