In October 2004, a team of Australian and Indonesian anthropologists led by Prof Morwood, now a professor of archaeology at the University of Wollongong near Sydney, stunned the world with their discovery of a new species, Homo floresiensis.
This was no creation of Tolkien's fantasy, however; but a tool-using, fire-making, co-operatively hunting person, standing only about a metre high.
The species had died out quite recently, perhaps only about 17,000 years ago.
Prof Morwood, an Auckland-born New Zealander, gave a public lecture in Dunedin this week on the history of human evolution.
The talk was the first of three Prof Morwood is giving throughout the country, sponsored by the Allan Wilson Centre, in Palmerston North, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth.
It also celebrates the 150th anniversary of Darwin's publishing On the Origin of Species.
Prof Morwood said that most scientists had now accepted that Homo floresiensis was a new species, but debate continued about the wider role of that species.
Scientific papers continued to be published on aspects of Flores man.
Prof Morwood had contributed to a paper, soon to be published in the journal Nature.
The Flores find showed how little was known about the fossil record of human evolution.
"It's been a good reality check."
The relatively small brain also showed that tool-making and use of fire were not just associated with large-brained hominids; and that there was more variety among lineages than thought.
It was now likely the standard paradigm for human dispersal out of Africa, namely that Homo erectus had been the first human species to leave, about 1.9 million years ago, was wrong.
It was likely the ancestors of Homo floresiensis left Africa earlier, about two million to 2.5 million years ago.
The Flores find also suggested that rather than being an evolutionary backwater, Asia may have had a larger role in human evolution than thought.