Hip bones imply early humans lived large

摘要

As indelicate as it sounds, a rare pair of nearly complete pelvic bones has thrust anthropologists up against the impressively large bodies of human ancestors. More than 200,000 years old, those pelvic fossils—one newly unearthed in Spain and the other extensively analyzed for the first time although it was discovered in China in 1984—belonged to individuals whose reconstructed physical build makes most people living today look puny. No other substantial pelvic remains from members of the human evolutionary family come from the same period as the new find. An African Homo ergaster pelvis dates to around 1.5 million years ago, and an Israeli Neandertal pelvis dates to about 60,000 years ago.