We present oxygen isotopic analyses of fragments of the near-Earth Cb-type asteroid Ryugu returned by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft that reinforce the close correspondence between Ryugu and CI chondrites. Small differences between Ryugu samples and CI chondrites in
can be explained at least in part by contamination of the latter by terrestrial water. The discovery that a randomly sampled C-complex asteroid is composed of CI-chondrite-like rock, combined with thermal models for formation prior to significant decay of the short-lived radioisotope 26Al, suggests that if lithified at the time of alteration, the parent body was small (≪50 km radius). If the parent planetesimal was large (>50 km in radius), it was likely composed of high-permeability, poorly lithified sediment rather than consolidated rock.