Gaby
Natural red hair is rare—about 2 percent of the world’s population has it. New research shows the pigments behind red hair stretch back millions of years.
A team from University College Cork in Ireland found fragments of pheomelanin—the pigment responsible for red hair—in fossilized frog remains. The samples they analyzed were roughly 10 million years old.
The results could help paleontologists reconstruct the original colors of long-extinct species.
What the Researchers Learned
The team ran lab experiments on black, red, and white bird feathers to track how pheomelanin breaks down during fossilization.
They then applied those findings to fossils of the extinct large frog Pelophylax pueyoi and confirmed a high concentration of the pigment, as reported by the Daily Mail.
Dr. Tiffany Slater said the discovery is exciting because it allows paleontologists to identify different melanin pigments in many other fossils. That makes it possible to build a more accurate picture of ancient animals’ coloration and to answer questions about how coloration evolved.
Professor Maria McNamara, the study’s lead author, said, “Fossils change under heat and pressure, but that doesn’t mean we lose all the original biomolecular information.” She argues these experiments are key to understanding fossil chemistry and show that traces of biomolecules can survive thermal changes during fossilization.
Pheomelanin is one of two forms of melanin found in mammals, birds, and reptiles, the other being eumelanin.
Red hair in people comes from a genetic variant that causes skin and hair cells to produce more pheomelanin. People with higher levels of eumelanin typically have brown or black hair and skin that tans easily.
The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.
The largest number of red-haired people live in the United States—about 12 million, roughly 6 percent of the U.S. population. In terms of percentage, Scotland has the highest share of redheads at about 13 percent, followed by Ireland at around 10 percent.
