With the growing climate crisis, are people shrinking in size?

The famous paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh, Professor Steve Brusatte, said that the growing climate crisis may lead to the shrinkage of humans, pointing out that mammals with smaller frames are better able to deal with rising global temperatures.

The paleontologist suggested that the way other mammals previously responded to periods of climate change could provide insight into the future of humans.

Brusatte compared the potential problem for humans as a result of climate change to being similar to that experienced by early horses, explaining that they became smaller in size with rising temperatures about 55 million years ago, a period called the Archaic Eocene Thermal Maximum, according to the British newspaper, The Guardian.

In his book "The Rise and Reign of the Mammals," Steve Brusatte wrote that animals in warmer parts of the world today are often smaller than those in cooler regions, an ecological principle known as Bergman's rule ».

While Brusatte noted that the reasons for the shrinkage of organisms in warm regions are not fully understood, he suggested that this is "partly because smaller animals have a higher surface area relative to their size compared to fuller animals, and therefore can better dispose of excess heat."

In statements quoted by "Sputnik" from the newspaper "The Guardian", Brusatte considered that "downsizing is a common method among mammals to deal with and adapt to climate change."

He added: "This does not mean that all mammal species will get smaller, but it seems to be a common survival trick for mammals when temperatures rise very quickly, which raises the following question: If temperatures rise too quickly, perhaps humans will become pygmies, could humans become smaller, and I think that certainly makes sense.”

In a recent study, researchers who study human remains over the past million years suggested that temperature is a key indicator of body size change, while scientists studying red deer said that warmer winters in northern Europe and Scandinavia may lead to a shrinking of the animal's body size. .

 Not all experts agree with Professor Steve Brusatte that warming is causing the mammals to shrink, including Professor Adrian Lister of the Natural History Museum in London, who doubts that humans will shrink as the climate warms.

Showing his view, he said, "We don't control natural selection, and if that were to happen, you would need to find a large number of people dying before they could reproduce because of the warming climate, and this does not happen in today's world, we wear clothes, and we have Heating, and we have air conditioning if it is very hot.”

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