When bones of a tiny adult hominid were found in an Indonesian cave in late 2004, they launched a firestorm of controversy. Scientists initially considered the 18,000-year-old remains to be strong evidence of the existence of a meter-tall species of human-like creature. Since there appeared to be only the bones of a single individual, there was the possibility, though, that the skeletal remains were that of a person who had suffered from a disease such as microencephaly that had distorted its proportions.