The skeletal remains of a three-foot long woman points to an entirely new species of humans, and not just someone with stunted growth, a team of scientists said.

The remains found in the remote island of Flores in Indonesia back in 2003 were termed by some scientists as a stunted version of other prehistoric humans. A team of scientists then compared the skull of the fossil, nicknamed as "Hobbit", with nine other skulls of humans known to be affected with microcephaly, a rare condition in which the head is abnormally small due to improper brain development.

At the end of the study, the scientists concluded that the 3-foot-tall woman had a highly evolved brain and was in no way affected by microcephaly. Dean Falk, from Florida State University who led the research, said, "It's not showing the shape of microcephaly. So we nailed that, we think. In addition, we can say that there are other special features which are unique and set it apart from anyone else."

However Robert Martin of the Field Museum in Chicago is still convinced that the skull remains came from a person suffering from microcephaly. "My gut feeling is what they (Falk's team) did is just played around with the measurements until they got something that suited them", he said.

Falk now believes the next important thing to do is to identify the origin of the skull. She added that it could have come from Australopithecenes, ape-like human ancestors, or a dwarf form of the extinct species Homo erectus. Martin said that there might be a possibility that the skull could indeed have come from a new species.

"But the other strong possibility is that this is actually just a pathological modern human. At the end of the day, hopefully, the truth will come out. And I'm not mad enough to think I'm right about everything. But there are ways of doing it and ways of not doing it", he said.

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