Human Ancestors Bigger, Study Finds

Human ancestors who lived between 10,000 and 1.8 million years ago were about 10% heavier than people today, a study says.

That’s an average figure for individuals across the time span, all members of the evolutionary grouping called Homo.

Body size in this group started to decline about 50,000 years ago, Christopher Ruff of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore reports with other scientists.

But modern people in North America and Europe might be about the same weight as ancestors living at about the same latitudes 10,000 years ago, Ruff said.

The analysis appeared in the May 8 issue of the journal Nature. The researchers estimated weight of the ancestors by two independent means, using such indicators as the breadth of the upper leg bone where it fit into the hip.