Human body size shaped by climate, evolutionary study shows

Research combines data from fossils with climate models, revealing the effect of climate on body and brain size

A well-known pattern in human evolution is an increase in body and brain size. Our species, Homo sapiens, is part of the Homo genus and emerged about 300,000 years ago. We are much bigger than earlier Homo species and have brains three times larger than humans who lived a million years ago.

There has been debate over the factors causing humans to evolve in this way, prompting a research team led by Cambridge University and Tubingen University in Germany to combine data on more than 300 human fossils from the Homo genus with climate models to establish the role the climate played in driving evolution.