Fur or Fire: Was the use of fire the initial selection pressure for fur loss in ancestral hominins?
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Abstract
A variety of reasons have been advanced to explain the loss of fur in humans and why they differ in this way from all other primates. None of these reasons has become generally accepted as the explanation for the absence of functionally effective thermally insulating fur. The hypotheses previously advanced have not satisfactorily explained why humans are the unique naked ape. This paper proposes a new hypothesis; that Homo sapiens ancestors use of fire created the initial selection pressure leading to fur loss in humans.
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2016. Fur or Fire: Was the use of fire the initial selection pressure for fur loss in ancestral hominins? PeerJ PrePrints 4:e1702v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1702v1Author comment
This is a preprint submission to PeerJ Preprints.
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Competing Interests
The author declares that they have no competing interests.
Author Contributions
Alan J Couch conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Data Deposition
The following information was supplied regarding data availability:
The research in this article did not generate any raw data.
Funding
The author received no funding for this work.
