Weekly World News Finds Hobbit Skeleton
Xoanon @ 11:32 am EST

A 'tabloid' newspaper in the US called Weekly World News makes it a habit to write fake articles and print them in the newspaper. They've written about Elvis being alive, Saddam and Osama being lovers, Aliens found on Mars, and a Bat-Boy, half bat, half boy, living among us. It's no surprise then that the latest issue features this article.

Hobbit Skeleton Found in New Zealand

New Zealand might really be the "Home of Middle Earth" after all!

While that advertising slogan has been reeling in tourists curious to visit the sites of the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, Kiwi archeologists have uncovered an historical link to the film's events: The world's first complete hobbit skeleton.

Ironically, parts of the skeleton were discovered last month during road construction near Matamata, the rural area that filmmaker Peter Jackson chose to stand in as the hobbit village of Hobbiton.

Members of the NEw Zealand Archeological Society were immediately called in to investigate the remains, which they expected to be Maori in origin.

"You can just imagine our exitement when we saw that elongated foot poking out of the ground - unmistakably hobbit!" says excavation leader Dr. Harold Cavendish. "We quickly knew we had something rare."

In fact, the assembled bones made up a complete hobbit skeleton: A young male in his early 60s, still clutching a stein commonly used to drink ale.

Even more remarkable, forensic scientists have deturmined the hobbit's cause of death.

"The impact fracture on the back of his skull is consistent with the shape of an orc weapon know as the 'orc gasher,' a crude axe," says New Zealand pathologist Eric Oxenburger.

"Our chap may have been just minding his own buisiness when a sudden orc attack quickly ended his life."

Archeologists hope this discovery will lead to further understanding of the mythshrouded era that provided inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien's "myth-based" novels.