Daniel García Martínez, a paleoanthropologist at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), is the lead author of the book “Los neandertales y su alta capacidad pulmonar” ("The Neanderthals and their great lung capacity"), the outreach version of a research work awarded the International Paleontology Research Prize 'Paleonturología 19' by the Fundación Dinópolis (FCPTD), which has just been published in the series Fundamental!

The authors of this work studied three particularly well-preserved Neanderthal individuals and compared them with living modern humans and other less complete fossil hominins. The result obtained suggests that Neanderthals had a lung capacity some 20% greater than a modern human of the same size.

The stronger build of Neanderthals might be explained by their greater needs for oxygen but, in addition to their muscle mass, other factors could also be considered, such as adaptations of the body to the climate and the great size of vital organs, like the brain, in Neanderthals.

The authors of the original research, published in the journal Communications Biology, apart from Daniel García-Martínez, are Nicole Torres-Tamayo, Isabel Torres-Sánchez, Francisco García-Río, Antonio Rosas and Markus Bastir, of the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (CSIC) and the Hospital Universitario La Paz Madrid.

This publication, 44 pages in color and profusely illustrated, will be available for purchase at the online store of the Fundación Dinópolis: www.dinopolis.com/tienda