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More people are being born without wisdom teeth and an extra artery in the arm as a result of human “microevolution” in recent years, according to a study.
Babies now have shorter faces, smaller jaws, and extra bones in their legs and feet, a study found in the Journal of Anatomy.
Australian researchers who worked on the article claim that the human race is evolving faster than it has at any time in the last 250 years.
Over time, human faces have gotten shorter, which has made our mouths smaller, with less room for so many teeth.
As part of natural selection and our increased ability to chew food, this has resulted in fewer people being born with wisdom teeth, said Dr. Teghan Lucas of Flinders University, Adelaide.
“Many people thought that humans had stopped evolving. But our study shows that we are still evolving, faster than at any time in the last 250 years,” he added.
An artery in the forearm that supplies blood to the hand has become more common in newborns since the 1800s, the study also found.
The median artery used to form in the uterus, but it disappeared after the baby was born and the radial and ulnar arteries had grown.
Now, one in three people keep their medium arteries for their entire lives, which poses no health risk and increases the blood supply on hand.
The author, Professor Maciej Henneberg, said: “This is ‘microevolution’ in modern humans.
“The median artery is a perfect example of how we are still evolving because more recently born people have a higher prevalence of this artery compared to humans of previous generations.”
The research was carried out by tracking the retention rate of different parts of the body through generations and dissecting preserved corpses of people born throughout the 20th century.
