Nina Jablonski facts for kids

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Quick facts for kids Nina Jablonski
Jablonski in 2017
Born	Nina Grace Jablonski (1953-08-20) August 20, 1953 (age 71) Hamburg, New York
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Bryn Mawr College (1975 A.B.) University of Washington (1981 Ph.D.)
Awards	Fletcher Foundation Fellow, 2005, Guggenheim Fellowship, 2012
Scientific career
Fields	anthropology, palaeobiology, paleontology, human biology
Institutions	The Pennsylvania State University
Thesis	Functional Analysis of the Masticatory Apparatus of Theropithecus gelada (Primates: Cercopithecidae) (1981)
Notable students	Tina Lasisi

Nina Grace Jablonski (born August 20, 1953) is an American anthropologist and palaeobiologist. She is famous for her studies on how human skin color has changed over time. She also teaches the public about human evolution, human differences, and how to fight racism.

In 2021, she became a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. In 2009, she joined the American Philosophical Society. She is a special professor at The Pennsylvania State University. She has written several books, including Skin: A Natural History and Living Color: The Biological and Social Meaning of Skin Color. She also co-wrote Skin We Are In.

Early Life and Education
Nina Jablonski's Career Journey
Research and Discoveries
See also

Early Life and Education

Nina Jablonski grew up on a farm in upstate New York State. Her parents encouraged her to explore science from a young age. She remembers digging for fossils near creeks and trees around her home.

Her interest in human evolution started in the mid-1960s. She watched a National Geographic show about the famous paleoanthropologists Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey. Their work in East Africa, especially with ancient human relatives, caught her attention. She decided right away that she wanted to study human evolution.

Jablonski earned her first degree in biology from Bryn Mawr College in 1975. That same year, she started her PhD in anthropology at the University of Washington. She studied the evolution of African Old World monkeys. In 1981, she finished her PhD. She has continued to research the evolution of Old World monkeys and other primates, like tarsiers and chimpanzees.

She has also taught at the University of Hong Kong and the University of Western Australia. During these years, she began her research on how humans started walking on two legs (called bipedalism) and how human skin color evolved.

Jablonski is married to George Chaplin, who is also a professor and her research partner at Penn State University. She can speak and write in Mandarin Chinese, and she can read Latin and German.

Nina Jablonski's Career Journey

While studying for her PhD, Jablonski did research at the University of Hong Kong. After getting her PhD, she became a lecturer there from 1981 to 1990. This allowed her to continue her research in comparative anatomy and paleontology. She started working with research institutes in China in 1982 and 1984.

Her interest grew in how the environment in East Asia changed over time. She also studied how these changes affected the evolution of mammals, especially primates. While in Hong Kong, Jablonski helped the police identify human remains. She also started working with George Chaplin on how humans began walking on two legs.

After Hong Kong, Jablonski moved to Australia with her husband. She worked at the University of Western Australia from 1990 to 1994. Here, she began her important research on the evolution of human skin color. She realized that studying these topics could help scientists understand what happened in the past.

From 1994 to 2006, she worked at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. She was recognized as a Fellow there. She helped organize and publish important meetings about anthropology. One of these meetings focused on how the first people came to the Americas.

Later, she moved to The Pennsylvania State University in 2006. She led the Anthropology Department until 2011. Today, she is a special professor of Anthropology at Penn State. Her research there includes Old World monkeys, how primates control their body temperature, and the meaning of human skin color.

Since 2012, she has worked with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who hosts the PBS show Finding Your Roots. They created a program to get younger students, especially students of color, interested in STEM fields. This led to a series of PBS webisodes called "Finding Your Roots: The Seedlings," which won several awards.

Research and Discoveries

Nina Jablonski studies human and primate evolution. She is especially known for her work on human skin. She has written two books about it. She researches how skin and skin pigmentation (color) came to be. She also looks at how much vitamin D humans need and how this relates to human migration and living in cities. In 2012, she received a special award to study how humans make vitamin D naturally. This research aims to help public health efforts against vitamin D deficiency.

Why Human Skin Color Varies

Jablonski studies how skin works and how evolution and society have influenced it. She found a link between certain birth defects and ultraviolet radiation (UV). UV radiation can damage folate in the skin.

Working with George Chaplin, she looked at the skin color of people around the world. They compared this to the amount of UV radiation from space. They suggested that dark skin with sweat glands developed as humans lost most of their body hair. They also showed that women often have slightly lighter skin than men. They believed that similar skin colors developed independently in different groups of people living in similar sunny areas. Later genetic studies proved this idea.

Jablonski's main findings explain that different skin colors around the world help balance two things. First, skin needs to protect against harmful UV radiation. Second, it needs to allow the body to make enough vitamin D. Darker skin, with more eumelanin, is found in people closer to the equator. Here, strong UV radiation can damage folate. Lighter skin is found in areas with less sunlight. This allows enough vitamin D to be made. Recent research also suggests a link between UV-induced folate loss and problems with controlling body temperature.

Jablonski connects these findings to modern health issues. She links certain diseases to people living far from their ancestors' sunny homelands. She also links them to modern indoor lifestyles. Not having enough vitamin D can lead to serious diseases like rickets. Too much UV radiation can cause skin cancers.

Skin Color and Ideas of Race

Since 2010, Jablonski has focused on how skin color led to the idea of different "races" during the European Enlightenment. Grouping people by skin color became common because it helped European and American businesses and politicians profit from the Atlantic slave trade.

Jablonski's interest in how race and racism affect people led her to work on the "Effects of Race Project" in South Africa. In 2010, she received an honorary doctorate for her work against racism worldwide.

Research on Old World Monkeys

Jablonski's research on Old World monkeys includes a lot of field work in Africa and Asia. She has made important discoveries, like finding an ape skull in China. She also found the first identified chimpanzee fossils.

In 2004, she and Sally McBrearty found chimpanzee teeth in Kenya. These fossils were about 545,000 years old. By comparing them to modern chimpanzee teeth, they confirmed they belonged to the chimpanzee family. This showed that chimpanzees were not always limited to forest homes. This discovery also proved that early humans and chimpanzees lived in the same areas at the same time.

Jablonski's work on the Theropithecus monkey genus has also been very important. She found a nearly complete skeleton of Theropithecus brumpti. This showed that T. brumpti was a ground-dwelling monkey, like the modern gelada, but much larger. Her research helps us understand the size, habitat, and diet of extinct Theropithecus species. She has also written textbook analyses of the fossil record of tarsiers, gibbons, and Cercopithecoidea as a whole.

How Primates Control Body Temperature

In 1994, Jablonski disagreed with a theory about thermoregulation (controlling body temperature) and human bipedalism. Another scientist, Peter Wheeler, thought that walking upright helped early humans stay cool in the sun. This would allow them to search for food longer without getting too hot. Jablonski's team created their own models. They found that the cooling benefits were not strong enough for natural selection to favor bipedalism.

In 2014, Jablonski began researching goose bumps. She was interested in how the skin of ring-tailed lemurs helps them control their body temperature. Goose bumps happen when tiny muscles in the skin contract. Jablonski noticed that early primates did not have strong networks of these muscles. This might have made it harder for them to find food in cooler climates. She concluded that the lack of these muscles likely contributed to their extinction in non-tropical areas. Jablonski also connected goose bumps to brain size. She thought that being able to control body temperature without changing metabolism was important for larger, more sensitive brains.

Jablonski is also interested in how ring-tailed lemurs behave to control their body temperature. In 2016, she visited Madagascar. She found that lemurs rely on sunbathing and huddling together to stay warm.