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I am not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I am trying to find the source and artist of this particular grotesque vision of what a future human would look like. I have reverse searched this picture and the results tends to be from science blogs, but I forgot what, nor does it give a source for the origin nor artist. A lot of the results are vague.

Just to cross out any potential answers, this image is DEFINITELY NOT from either Dougal Dixon's Man After Man, OR C. M. Kosemen's All Tomorrows. This image has been very hard to place but, having read both it is not from there (nor does it look like either of their art styles). This picture has at least existed online since 2004, judging from this Wayback Machine crawl. https://web.archive.org/web/20041212184033/https://evolution.haifa.ac.il/html/html_eng/aaron_avivi.html

EDIT: Another bout of reverse image searching proved useless, the nearest to a lead is this archive science webpage that says the image is from an issue of Playboy magazine? It does not give the issue, let alone artist, so who knows. https://archive.vn/w0yfm

Answers would be greatly appreciated!

The grotesque 'future human' in all its...um, glory

A nude, pale, bald male humanoid annotated with a number of potential adaptational deviations from baseline human

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It looks like it comes from the March 1971 edition of Playboy. The article is entitled "Polluted Man" by Arthur Kretchmayer, with illustrations by Don Punchatz. It concerns the form of the possible evolution of the human race: "The survival of the fittest is one thing — but was Darwin ready for the homo effluviens?"

Some images are available here.

Illustration of "Polluted Man"

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  • Oh thank you so much! Yes this is absolutely the origin of the image it seems, it really did come from Playboy as that article said too! Wow! Of course its by Don Punchatz too, he was a fantastic illustrator. This means this long predates Man After Man, let alone All Tomorrows!
    – Samzer
    Commented Dec 22, 2022 at 1:04

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