Tolkien's hobbits walked an awful long way, but the real "hobbit", Homo floresiensis, would not have got far.
Its flat, clown-like feet probably limited its speed to what we would consider a stroll, and kept its travels short, says Bill Jungers, an anthropologist at the State University of New York in Stony Brook.
"It's never going to win the 100-yard dash, and it's never going to win the marathon," he says.
Didn't the "real" Hobbits have big feet? This seems a better argument for a non-diseased critter than much of the skull work done. But then, we'll probably get someone showing how pygmies have big feet, too.