Human evolution; erectus stockier (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, July 07, 2020, 20:50 (1382 days ago) @ David Turell

New study of whole teenage fossil, Turkana boy:

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-ancestral-commonalities-modern-human-body.html

"'That Homo erectus was perhaps not the lean, athletic long-distance runner we imagined is consistent with more recent fossil finds and larger body weight estimates than previously obtained," notes Fred Spoor of London's Natural History Museum and the paper's senior author. "This iconic ancestor was probably a little less like us than we portrayed it over the years."

"The work reveals for the first time what the three-dimensional shape of the ribcage of the Homo erectus skeleton, known as the Turkana Boy, looked like. Discovered west of Lake Turkana, Kenya in the mid-1980s, the 1.5-million-year-old fossil is the most complete skeleton of a fossil human ancestor ever found.

"Specifically, it had a deeper, wider and shorter chest than seen in modern humans, suggesting that Homo erectus had a stockier build than commonly assumed. It thus appears that the fully modern human body shape evolved more recently than scientists previously concluded, rather than as early as two million years ago—when Homo erectus first emerged.

"'The results are now changing our understanding of Homo erectus," says lead author Bastir. "Its thorax was much wider and more voluminous than that of most people living today."

"'Actually, the ribcage of Homo erectus seems more similar to that of more stocky human relatives such as Neandertals, who would have inherited that shape from Homo erectus," adds García Martínez.

"The evolution of the modern human body shape is a fascinating transformation in light of the way we and our ancestors are adapted to our natural environment, the scientists observe. As modern humans, we have a relatively tall, slender body shape that contrasts with the shorter, stocky, heavy bodied Neandertals."

Comment: Makes perfect sense, since it suggests a morphology more like Neanderthal which came from the same ancestor as sapiens. An adaptive change in the same species.