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Full-Text Articles in Biological and Physical Anthropology
Fatty Females And Muscular Males: Investigating Human Sexual Dimorphism Across The Upper And Lower Skeleton, Brooklin Edwards
Fatty Females And Muscular Males: Investigating Human Sexual Dimorphism Across The Upper And Lower Skeleton, Brooklin Edwards
Anthropology Undergraduate Honors Theses
The sexual dimorphism profile of human body composition produces a unique pattern. Compared to other primates, humans have a mild size dimorphism; however, human males have a particularly muscular upper body and human females have a permanent fatty composition. These findings have resulted in varying interpretations related to sexual selection, mating systems, and male competition. Using humerus and femur measurements collected from 9 primate species, we investigated how the pronounced sexually dimorphic tissue composition of humans influences skeletal elements compared to the other primates. We hypothesized that over the course of human evolution, human females developed a body composition that …