Novel notion for the evolution of the human chin: to help hold things

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/azo.12527
Chin up: A novel functional explanation
for the evolution of the chin
Abstract
The human chin, also frequently referred to
as the mental prominence, is a partof the
human anatomy whose evolutionary origin and
function have divided scientific opinion to
this day. There were suggestions it could
have been used indefence, assisted in the
mastication process, aided in the formation
of words (i.e.speaking), or that it played a
role in mate choice. None of these
explanations weresatisfactory. This paper,
backed up by observations on people from
different partsof the world and cultures,
using their chin to hold or clamp down
objects resting on a person's arms in
front of the body or to free the person's
hands for othertasks, offers an explanation
that has support from results on the
evolution of bipedalism from apes to bipedal
australopithecines, including Homo sapiens,
and the importance of the hands in hominids
as well as the heritability of the trait.