There’s something odd about the bones of ancient humans. It’s always a bit stupefying to gaze at a femur pulled from the earth and think about it being on the inside of a living, breathing human very much like yourself. But that’s not what stood out to Erik Trinkaus, an anthropologist at Washington University who studies the bones of ancient humans.
He had a pivotal realization about the femurs, skulls, teeth and other assorted skeletal fragments that comprise our best evidence of the lives of our distant ancestors: They’re riddled with deformities.
