Brief Communication                                                               Nature, 13 Jan 2000

Nature 403 (6766):156 © Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

Evolutionary fitness: tall men have more reproductive success.*

Pawlowski B, Dunbar RI, Lipowicz A.
Department of Anthropology, University of Wroclaw, Poland

Sexual selection is a well established evolutionary process based on preferences for specific traits in one sex by members of the other sex. It is important in the evolution of morphological traits, and several sexually dimorphic traits in humans, such as facial hair and facial shape, are assumed to be the outcome of such a process. Here we demonstrate that taller men are reproductively more successful than shorter men, indicating that there is active selection for stature in male partners by women.

*Reproduced with permission of Nature © Macmillan Pub. Ltd 2000 Reg. No. 785998 England.