Please click on the book cover above for a fuller-sized version.

Professor Mike Morwood, Archaeology, University of New England, Australia, contacted me tonight to let me know that Random House (Australia) has published his new book on Homo floresiensis. The name of the book is The Discovery of the Hobbit: The Scientific Breakthrough that Changed the Face of Human History.

Morwood’s book is with Penny van Oosterzee, who is one of Australia’s best science writers, and is the recipient of the 1997 Eureka Science Book Prize for her book Where Worlds Collide: The Wallace Line. She is most-remembered for her highly-praised 2000 book, Dragon Bones: The Story of Peking Man. That volume detailed the emotional and compelling story of the Chinese Homo erectus. It is described as "a riveting historical account of the discovery of Peking Man, from the excavation of one small fossilized molar to the mysterious disappearance of the fossils at the beginning of the Second World War."

Mike Morwood’s and Penny van Oosterzee’s book has become one of the year’s most highly anticipated new books on palaeoanthropology, and specifically the subject of Homo floresiensis. The Hobbits are able to generate media attention globally. These 3-feet-tall hominids are so interesting to the general public, it seems clear that Morwood’s and van Oosterzee’s book will be an immediate success.

Morwood tells me the publication date is 2007 but, in Australia, at least, it will be available in bookshops before Christmas and can be ordered now.

The American version by the Smithsonian/Harper Collins, entitled A New Human, will be out by May 1, 2007.