That's a really good point.
No evolutionary pressure once someone has reproduced, and skin cancer and skin cancer is both rare under 30[1] and take some years to kill.
[1] https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-...
No evolutionary pressure once someone has reproduced, and skin cancer and skin cancer is both rare under 30[1] and take some years to kill.
[1] https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-...
Thus if there are group selective pressures at play. Those with adults who live longer may outcompete those who do not.
And it may explain why darker skin (which has less incidents of skin cancer) was selected for at lower latitudes, while white skin (more effective as absorbing vitamin D) was selected for at higher latitudes.
The paper doesn’t specify why these genes might have been under such strong selection. But the likely explanation for the pigmentation genes is to maximize vitamin D synthesis, said paleoanthropologist Nina Jablonski of Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), University Park, as she looked at the poster’s results at the meeting. People living in northern latitudes often don’t get enough UV to synthesize vitamin D in their skin so natural selection has favored two genetic solutions to that problem—evolving pale skin that absorbs UV more efficiently or favoring lactose tolerance to be able to digest the sugars and vitamin D naturally found in milk.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/04/how-europeans-evolve...