Contributors

Twenty-three years ago, Penn State evolutionary anthropologist and paleobiologist Nina Jablonski was asked to give a lecture on skin to an introductory human biology class at the University of Western Australia. She wanted to talk about the evolution of skin color, but found the academic literature “completely bereft of good discussion” on the topic. At the time she had been studying primate evolution and the fossil record of Old World monkeys, and she still does research in paleontology today. But the problem nagged at her, and eventually she devoted much of her research to the exploration of skin pigment, both its evolutionary roots and social implications. “It was time to put our social reservations aside and start working on it,” she says. Jablonski is currently starting a new project to investigate vitamin D production in South Africa, where people with a great range of skin pigmentation live under a highly ...