Lemondrop

At least your cravings for salty snacks won't stunt your growth.

New evidence suggests that the remains of what scientists called "Hobbits" -- and hoped were a new species of human -- were actually just people suffering from congenital hypothyroid cretinism, or an iodine deficiency. Probably because it was hard to find iodized table salt at the grocery store in the secluded cave system in which they lived some 15,000 years ago.

The remains of the "Hobbits" were first discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores back in 2003. They had egg-headed, Tolkien-loving scientists all worked up, but now the hypothesis that Bilbo Bagginses once ran among us has been disproved as mere bunk.

Disappointing! The would-be Hobbits were just people stunted by malnourishment. They probably had goiters, too. Big ones. An extensive comparison of Homo floresiensis (the Hobbit folks) to unaffected human remains from a similar time was conducted to support these findings.

We can't say we were particularly surprised. After all, hobbits are from Middle Earth and there's just no way that Middle Earth and Indonesia are the same place -- everyone knows that. Now if you'll excuse us, we have some cloaks to mend before our next Dagorhir meet-up.