ArticleNature communications2021
Different environmental variables predict body and brain size evolution in Homo.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Competing models of hominin body size evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Reconstruction and Comparative Analysis of a Large Late Pleistocene Modern Human Femur From Wajak, Indonesia.American journal of biological anthropology · 2026Article
- Pan-African model explainsbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Genetic Insights into Head-to-Body Ratios Via Deep Learning-Based Image Segmentation and Implications for Common Diseases.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Article
- Why did the human brain size evolve? A way forward.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- The extent of the hip bone sexual dimorphism in two Italian coeval modern skeletal samples.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Hominin brain size increase has emerged from within-species encephalization.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Sex differences in functional cortical organization reflect differences in network topology rather than cortical morphometry.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Evolutionary-developmental (evo-devo) dynamics of hominin brain size.Nature human behaviour · 2024Article
- The wooden artifacts from Schöningen's Spear Horizon and their place in human evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Ethnicity and anthropometric deficits in children: A cross-sectional analysis of national survey data from 18 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.PLOS global public health · 2024Article
- Sex differences in intrinsic functional cortical organization reflect differences in network topology rather than cortical morphometry.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Article
- Ecosystem productivity affected the spatiotemporal disappearance of Neanderthals in Iberia.Nature ecology & evolution · 2022Article
- A spatiotemporally explicit paleoenvironmental framework for the Middle Stone Age of eastern Africa.Scientific reports · 2022Article
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4 authors.
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Abstract
Increasing body and brain size constitutes a key macro-evolutionary pattern in the hominin lineage, yet the mechanisms behind these changes remain debated. Hypothesized drivers include environmental, demographic, social, dietary, and technological factors. Here we test the influence of environmental factors on the evolution of body and brain size in the genus Homo over the last one million years using a large fossil dataset combined with global paleoclimatic reconstructions and formalized hypotheses tested in a quantitative statistical framework. We identify temperature as a major predictor of body size variation within Homo, in accordance with Bergmann's rule. In contrast, net primary productivity of environments and long-term variability in precipitation correlate with brain size but explain low amounts of the observed variation. These associations are likely due to an indirect environmental influence on cognitive abilities and extinction probabilities. Most environmental factors that we test do not correspond with body and brain size evolution, pointing towards complex scenarios which underlie the evolution of key biological characteristics in later Homo.
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