Just as some animals have done before us, humans may shrink to adapt to rising temperatures due to climate change. At least that’s the theory of a Scottish paleontologist.
Mammals that live in warm regions are smaller than those in cold regions. This would be especially true of the first horses, who lived about 55 million years ago.
“The reasons are not entirely clear, but it is likely, in part, that smaller animals have more surface area than larger animals and can therefore conduct excess heat better”explains Professor Steve Brusatte, paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh, quoted by the English newspaper the guard† According to the researcher, these elements may suggest a “plausible” way for humans to shrink to adapt to rising temperatures under the influence of global warming.
This theory is interesting for other scientists. In July 2021, researchers from the University of Cambridge in (UK) and the University of Tübingen (Germany) published a study in the journal NatureCommunication†
The authors of the work studied the body and brain sizes of more than 300 human fossils. According to their estimates, temperature is one of the main factors that causes the size of the human body to change over the past million years. Obviously, the warm climate could lead to a decrease in corpulence, while the cold climate would produce larger bodies.
However, the impact of global warming on human height may have other causes, for example the availability of food and resources. This is the counter-argument of certain researchers, in particular Professor Adrian Lister of the Natural History Museum in London, also quoted by the guard†
(ETX Daily Up)