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CT scans of people who died between 1900 and 1920 compared with those who died between 2022 and 2024 show skulls have become more brachycephalic, with shorter foreheads, larger mastoid processes and increased sexual dimorphism. Shiori Usui attributes the changes to improved childhood nutrition and softer diets rather than genetic evolution.
New ScientistJapanese people’s skulls have become rounder over the past 100 years, losing the longer front-to-back oval shape common at the turn of the 20th century. Computed tomography scans of 34 men and 22 women who died of natural causes between 1900 and 1920 were compared with scans from 29 men and 27 women who died between 2022 and 2024.
The 1900-1920 skulls came from bodies donated to the Kyoto University Medical School for dissection that later became skeleton specimens in the museum.
The more recent bodies underwent autopsy imaging that contributed to a virtual skeleton collection in Japan. Researchers used 161 landmarks on 3D skull images to measure shape. People have become more brachycephalic, @NewScientist reported.
Skulls have mostly lost the oval shape they once had at the turn of the 20th century. In the past 100 years, the heads of Japanese people have got rounder with narrower cheekbones, wider upper jaws and slimmer, more prominent noses. Foreheads have got shorter, starting higher on the face, and have become slightly more dished.
The mastoid process has become larger and more projecting. People who died between 1900 and 1920 had longer skulls from front to back compared to people who died between 2022 and 2024. The differences between men and women are larger than they were 100 years ago.
Male skulls have stronger brow ridges, larger mastoid areas and more projecting faces than female skulls. Sexual dimorphism in skulls has actually increased over the past 100 years. “This was a striking and unexpected result for us,” Shiori Usui said.
“We expected to see more ‘neutral’ facial structures. ” Shiori Usui works at the National Research Institute of Police Science in Chiba, Japan. The changes seem too recent to result from genetic evolution.
The changes probably result from better health and nutrition during childhood and eating softer foods that require less chewing. Scientists often use measurements from 19th- and early 20th-century human remains as references for modern humans. People are generally taller and larger today than a century ago due in large part to changes in their health, diet and environment.
A 2024 US study has hinted at similar changes in men’s and women’s faces over time. But a US study published in 2000 pointed to an opposite change in general head shape, more oval than round, in the past 100 years. That could reflect technological limitations or ethnic changes from large-scale immigration in the US population.
70235. “It makes sense that similar morphological shifts are occurring worldwide, as lifestyles modernise globally,” Shiori Usui said. For Francesco Cappello at the University of Palermo, Italy, the study underscores that even relatively recent human populations don’t get fixed at a certain physical norm, but instead continue to change.
“This raises important questions about the interplay between genetics and environment – especially in traits that have traditionally been considered relatively stable, like that of the biomorphology of the bones,” he said. The findings suggest that scientists should consider updating their standards for identifying human remains, said Kimberly Plomp at the University of the Philippines Diliman.
“If modern human crania, and potentially other bones, have changed in morphology in such a short period of time, this could mean that the methods we use are no longer as accurate as hoped,” she said.
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