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This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 11 February 2025. "Skin pigmentation" redirects here. For animal skin pigmentation, see Biological pigment. Extended Coloured family from South Africa showing some spectrum of human skin coloration Human skin color ranges from the darkest brown to the lightest hues. Differences in skin color among ...
In humans, melanin is the primary determinant of skin color. It is also found in hair, the pigmented tissue underlying the iris of the eye, and the stria vascularis of the inner ear. In the brain, tissues with melanin include the medulla and pigment-bearing neurons within areas of the brainstem, such as the locus coeruleus.
Through a process called melanogenesis, melanocytes produce melanin, which is a pigment found in the skin, eyes, hair, nasal cavity, and inner ear. This melanogenesis leads to a long-lasting pigmentation, which is in contrast to the pigmentation that originates from oxidation of already-existing melanin.
Dark skin is a type of human skin color that is rich in melanin pigments. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] People with dark skin are often referred to as black people , [ 4 ] although this usage can be ambiguous in some countries where it is also used to specifically refer to different ethnic groups or populations.
The variants of the MC1R gene that are linked with freckles started to emerge in the human genotype when humans started to leave Africa. The variant Val92Met arose somewhere between 250,000 and 100,000 years ago, long enough for this gene to be carried by humans into central Asia. Arg160Trp is estimated to have arisen around 80,000 years ago ...
Light skin is a human skin color that has a low level of eumelanin pigmentation as an adaptation to environments of low UV radiation. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Due to migrations of people in recent centuries, light-skinned populations today are found all over the world.
The Fitzpatrick scale has been criticized for its Eurocentric bias and insufficient representation of global skin color diversity. [9] The scale originally was developed for classifying "white skin" in response to solar radiation, [2] and initially included only four categories focused on white skin, with "brown" and "black" skin types (V and VI) added as an afterthought.
Melanin is produced within the skin in cells called melanocytes and it is the main determinant of the skin colour of darker-skinned humans. The skin colour of people with light skin is determined mainly by the bluish-white connective tissue under the dermis and by the haemoglobin circulating in the veins of the dermis.