Archaeologists discover a secret dwelling where ancient 'hobbits' may once have lived

Archaeologists may very well have discovered a hole in the ground where a real-life hobbit once lived. Further excavation of the Liang Bua rock shelter on the Indonesian Flores island, where the one-meter-tall human H. floresiensis was uncovered a decade ago, has revealed a previously hidden chamber. The room sports a "front" entrance that, according to the team's work, may have been in use for much of the last 200,000 years. This, archaeologists suspect, may hold important new evidence about the "hobbits."

Archaeologists first discovered H. floresiensis in 2003, when they unearthed the remains of an early human standing about a meter tall and dating back to as recently as 18,000 years ago — which, New Scientist notes, is "long after other early human species, including the Neanderthals, had disappeared." The group of diminutive humans is believed to have lived on the tropical island alongside "dwarf elephants and giant lizards."

The discovery sparked quite a stir, but researchers are still torn about whether it revealed a new species or just a particularly small group of Homo Sapiens. More evidence, which the alluring new chamber might hold, could settle the debate once and for all.

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So far in the new room, archaeologists have only uncovered animal bones and stone tools that appear to be "a few centuries or millennia old, probably left there by modern humans," New Scientist reports. But what archaeologists are really hoping to find — and which they believe may be buried down lower in the sediment — are more H. floresiensis remains.