‘Bluey’ Coins Worth $400,000 Stolen by Australian Warehouse Worker, Police Say

This undated handout photo taken by the New South Wales Police Force and released on August 7, 2024 shows bags of seized commemorative Bluey coins at an undisclosed location. (New South Wales Police / AFP)
This undated handout photo taken by the New South Wales Police Force and released on August 7, 2024 shows bags of seized commemorative Bluey coins at an undisclosed location. (New South Wales Police / AFP)
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‘Bluey’ Coins Worth $400,000 Stolen by Australian Warehouse Worker, Police Say

This undated handout photo taken by the New South Wales Police Force and released on August 7, 2024 shows bags of seized commemorative Bluey coins at an undisclosed location. (New South Wales Police / AFP)
This undated handout photo taken by the New South Wales Police Force and released on August 7, 2024 shows bags of seized commemorative Bluey coins at an undisclosed location. (New South Wales Police / AFP)

An Australian man is set to appear in court on Wednesday after being arrested for the alleged theft of more than A$600,000 ($393,000) worth of commemorative coins linked to the popular children's television show "Bluey", police said.

The 47-year-old is accused of stealing 63,000 unreleased, limited-edition A$1 coins from a secure warehouse in the Sydney suburb of Wetherill Park in June, according to "Strike Force Bandit", a special unit police set up to investigate the theft.

One of last year's most streamed television shows in the United States, the Australian animated show targeted at children is widely loved by adults too and is the 14th highest-rated show of all time, movie tracker website IMDB.com showed.

The coins, produced by the Australian mint, are legal tender and resemble regular A$1 coins albeit with one face featuring the anthropomorphic canine character "Bluey". Police say they are selling online for 10 times their face value.

A similar run of special commemorative coins sell for A$20 each on the mint's website - coins designed to be collectors' items only and not legal tender. One eBay seller was charging almost A$600 for a pack of three.

Detective Superintendent Joseph Doueihi told reporters at a press conference he was not initially aware of the show's popularity.

"The theft of these coins have deprived a lot of young children and members of the community from having access to these coins, so we're doing our absolute best to try to recover these coins and put them back into circulation."

Police said the man worked at the warehouse where the coins were being stored for two days on their way to Brisbane.

They alleged he stole the coins, which weighed 500 kilograms (1102 lb), from the back of a truck with the help of two male accomplices. The coins were then sold online within hours.

A raid on a Sydney house in June recovered 189 coins but Doueihi said the vast bulk of coins are already in circulation. Those who have received one do not need to surrender it to police, he said.



Fossils Suggest Even Smaller ‘Hobbits’ Roamed an Indonesian Island 700,000 Years Ago

A fragment (left) of the upper arm bone called the humerus - belonging to a diminutive extinct human species called Homo floresiensis, that dates to about 700,000 years ago and was discovered at the Mata Menge site on the Indonesian island of Flores - is shown at the same scale as the humerus of a later Homo floresiensis fossil dating to 60,000 years ago from the Liang Bua cave site in Flores, in this handout image released on August 6, 2024. (Yousuke Kaifu/Handout via Reuters)
A fragment (left) of the upper arm bone called the humerus - belonging to a diminutive extinct human species called Homo floresiensis, that dates to about 700,000 years ago and was discovered at the Mata Menge site on the Indonesian island of Flores - is shown at the same scale as the humerus of a later Homo floresiensis fossil dating to 60,000 years ago from the Liang Bua cave site in Flores, in this handout image released on August 6, 2024. (Yousuke Kaifu/Handout via Reuters)
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Fossils Suggest Even Smaller ‘Hobbits’ Roamed an Indonesian Island 700,000 Years Ago

A fragment (left) of the upper arm bone called the humerus - belonging to a diminutive extinct human species called Homo floresiensis, that dates to about 700,000 years ago and was discovered at the Mata Menge site on the Indonesian island of Flores - is shown at the same scale as the humerus of a later Homo floresiensis fossil dating to 60,000 years ago from the Liang Bua cave site in Flores, in this handout image released on August 6, 2024. (Yousuke Kaifu/Handout via Reuters)
A fragment (left) of the upper arm bone called the humerus - belonging to a diminutive extinct human species called Homo floresiensis, that dates to about 700,000 years ago and was discovered at the Mata Menge site on the Indonesian island of Flores - is shown at the same scale as the humerus of a later Homo floresiensis fossil dating to 60,000 years ago from the Liang Bua cave site in Flores, in this handout image released on August 6, 2024. (Yousuke Kaifu/Handout via Reuters)

Twenty years ago on an Indonesian island, scientists discovered fossils of an early human species that stood at about 3 1/2 feet (1.07 meters) tall — earning them the nickname “hobbits.”

Now a new study suggests ancestors of the hobbits were even slightly shorter.

“We did not expect that we would find smaller individuals from such an old site,” study co-author Yousuke Kaifu of the University of Tokyo said in an email.

The original hobbit fossils — named by the discoverers after characters in “The Lord of the Rings” — date back to between 60,000 and 100,000 years ago. The new fossils were excavated at a site called Mata Menge, about 45 miles from the cave where the first hobbit remains were uncovered.

In 2016, researchers suspected the earlier relatives could be shorter than the hobbits after studying a jawbone and teeth collected from the new site. Further analysis of a tiny arm bone fragment and teeth suggests the ancestors were a mere 2.4 inches (6 centimeters) shorter and existed 700,000 years ago.

“They’ve convincingly shown that these were very small individuals,” said Dean Falk, an evolutionary anthropologist at Florida State University who was not involved with the research.

The findings were published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

Researchers have debated how the hobbits – named Homo floresiensis after the remote Indonesian island of Flores – evolved to be so small and where they fall in the human evolutionary story. They're thought to be among the last early human species to go extinct.

Scientists don't yet know whether the hobbits shrank from an earlier, taller human species called Homo erectus that lived in the area, or from an even more primitive human predecessor. More research – and fossils – are needed to pin down the hobbits’ place in human evolution, said Matt Tocheri, an anthropologist at Canada's Lakehead University.

“This question remains unanswered and will continue to be a focus of research for some time to come,” Tocheri, who was not involved with the research, said in an email.