Or that females were longer legged because males found them more attractive (imagine a 4m yr old betty grable - great gams!)

Or that men were shorter legged because it helped the more agreesive females catch the then shy and illusive males to mate (imagine a 4m yr old 'sadie hawkins')

F Brett, Tulsa, Ok

Jim from Illinois - sorry but your argument doesn't stack up. In modern humans longer legs means longer arms because we all have roughly the same proportions. But as modern apes show, its perfectly possible to evolve long arms and short legs. As for long legs being needed for running down game - do you think our ancestors ran after game like cheetahs? More likely they used their intelligence to ambush and lay traps. However it is well established that long legs are a plains adaptation in many animals as it keeps the body away from the hot ground. That plus being able to see further is probably what drove humans to get taller, not crude sexual selection.

Jonthan, London, UK

I agree with the New Zealander. This so-called researcher is probably 4ft 6in...

Andrew, Gothenburg, Sweden

Thank you K Hutchison for your comments, they might as well have run an article saying that the reason no-one has seen the tooth fairy is because tooth fairies became extinct after the demise of Paranthropus.
Saying short men were irresistible is like saying food is irresistible, what were the options? Implying understanding of complex behaviour by early hominids - well, you might as well say tigers must go around in prides because lions do, but the connections are even more tenuous than those between lions and tigers. "They would also have been the most aggressive" and "a squat physique and stance helped the males fight over access to females"... What can I say? to be taken seriously, such assertions must be susceptible to being disproved.
A hodge-podge of half-baked supposition and woolly-minded rambling might pass muster for the sports columns in the Sutton and Cheam parish monthly or the pages of Hansard, but it shouldn't be maquerading as science journalism.

Kidd Garrett, Bristol, UK

The first paragraph of this story and part of the second paragraph are incorrect and do not reflect University of Utah Professor David Carrier’s research. This research makes absolutely no statement about how australopith females viewed males. It does not say females found the males irresistible nor does it say anything about sex appeal. Carrier did compare leg length and two indicators of aggression in human aborigines and eight other species of modern primates. He found short limbs correlated with aggression, even after correcting for possible confounding factors. That led Carrier to conclude that short legs in australopiths indicate they fought over access to females. The story fails to state this primary conclusion. I also note the reporter did not contact Carrier for an interview, but instead apparently wrote the story from the news release. Had he spoken to Carrier, the inaccuracies might have been prevented.
University of Utah Public Relations

Lee Siegel, Salt Lake Citt, USA/Utah

Since Lewis Smith appears to be an apologist for short men, it makes one wonder how tall is Mr. Smith. Further, our species has evolved because of tool use. When exactly primitive men and women start throwing sticks and stones? When did the stone axe come into use? When was the first bow and arrow used? When did the first spear appear? All these weapons give the advantage to taller human-like beings because longer legs usually mean longer arms and these are arm-power driven weapons. Also, we should consider that when our jungle -living ancestors moved into the plains, longer legs meant the ability to chase big game and high meat protein diets produce growth. Nature seems to have intended that bringing home the bacon is an aphrodisiac for the female of the species. Natural selection dictates that stronger, taller men mated with the most attractive and best-breeding women.

Jim, Roscoe, Illinois

Shame on you for publicising this piece of day-dreaming. I looked this up because I thought that it was science-based. Instead I only see pure speculation, the only evidence for the various assumptions made being that modern male apes have shorter legs than smaller females. He confesses that he does not know whether Australopiths were very aggressive, but decides that shorter legs must mean more aggression 4 million years ago! For all he knows, females might have evolved longer legs because they were inherently monogamous and needed run faster to preserve their virtue!

K Hutchison, Tauranga, New Zealand