December 11, 2011 | By JD van Zyl
Legendary creatures and where to find them — if they really exist

Flores 'hobbits' — Indonesia



An artist rendering of a a dwarf Homo floresiensis that lived on the remote island of Flores in Indonesia between 17,000 and 100,000 years ago. Drawingcreated by Peter Schouten and released by National Geographic Society. (© National Geographic Society/AP Photo)
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  • An artist rendering of a a dwarf Homo floresiensis that lived on the remote island of Flores in Indonesia between 17,000 and 100,000 years ago. Drawingcreated by Peter Schouten and released by National Geographic Society. (© National Geographic Society/AP Photo)
  • Mocked-up impression of a chupacabra sighting. (© Alamy-Dale O'Dell)
  • A coelacanth captured in the Comoros (an island nation in the Indian Ocean). (© Alamy)
  • Supposed footprint of the yeti, found near Mt Everest. (© Getty)
  • A still from the film 'Shark Attack 3: Megalodon'. (© Alamy)
  • Dr. Tsunemi Kubodera, of the National Science Museum, stands in front of a giant squid captured in 1996 in the Japan Sea. (© Itsuo Inouye/AP Photo)
  • The Chichibu mountains, legendary home of the shamanu.It was an early autumn evening in 1996 when Hiroshi Yagi, a keen shamanu seeker, claimed to have spotted this dwarf wolf on an abandoned forest trail in the mountainous region of Chichibu. He snapped no fewer than 19 photos of the creature, long thought extinct, but nobody has seen it since. (© Satoshi Inoue/Getty)
  • The 'extinct' giant sloth. (© Alamy-David Crausby)
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Small, vicious and notorious for their undiscriminating appetite, dwarf humans dwelling in the Indonesian archipelago were long considered the stuff of myth, and referred to as the Ebu Gogo — until scientists' still-contentious discovery of tiny humanoid skulls in a cave on Flores Island in 2003 electrified the world. Some have speculated that the little people could still be dwelling on some of the country's countless small islands.

* Bing: More Ebu Gogo images

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