MODERN medicine is sometimes said to have freed humans from the constraints of evolution because vaccines, drugs and surgery allow weaker genes and individuals to survive and reproduce instead of being culled by natural selection. This is a long-standing concern with important social implications: similar worries about the survival of the unfittest helped usher in the eugenics movement in the early 20th century.
So it is good to see yet more evidence that we are still evolving (see "Meet future woman: shorter, plumper, more fertile"). In fact, researchers have made the first scientific prediction of what humanity - or at least half of it - will look like in 400 years: women will become stouter, healthier and fertile for longer. This is evolution at work. Darwin is still in charge.
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Have your say
Seems the exact opposite of what sexual selection would prefer. I can see why women might be more fertile because people are having kids later and later but why shorter and plumper?
It seems to me that men who find tall thin women attractive are actually looking for a nice young man., but cant express it. women without some flesh and curves do not look maternal.
Very true the catwalk models used by male designers looking for a dream show this 30 years ago we called them child bearing hips
Prof Steve Jones has been telling us every year for the past 13 years that human evolution has finished. I doubt whether this will force him to retract, but I live in hope.
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