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ANCESTRAL HORSES had four toes in the front and three in the back, and even earlier horses may have had five toes on each foot. "Modern horses retain but a single toe. They also develop vestiges of the old second and fourth toes as short splints of bone mounted high and inconspicuously above the hoof." Some mutant horses actually grow extra toes. https://lnkd.in/dxQA6w3 View in LinkedIn

HISTORICAL REMNANTS. "Retained tails in humans, or external hindlimbs in cetaceans and snakes—lost from ancestors but present again—are other telltale clues to organismal history, both phylogenetic and ontogenetic, as are the re-emergent “hen’s teeth and horse’s toes” that Gould made famous in his book of the same name." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

EVOLUTIONARY THROWBACKS. "When a formerly lost trait re-emerges in ‘throwback’ form, the resulting atavism (from the Latin atavus for ancestor, or literally great-great-great grandfather) is a kind of re-appearing artifact." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

The supermarket food gamble may be up View in LinkedIn

WEBBED FEET. "The webbing between digits of a foot, as in waterfowl like the flightless cormorant, generally reflects the lack of such cell death and thus reveals the largely unaltered embryonic limb bud as a sort of simple ontogenetic artifact, yet one that is still obviously functional as a webbed foot and that bears too on the evolution of the taxon when viewed in comparison with related taxa (e.g., a duck’s foot vs. a chicken’s)." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

COMPOUND CLUES. "Another example of compound historical clues, apoptosis (programmed cell death) typically transforms a paddle-like vertebrate limb bud into a hand or foot with distinct, discrete digits." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

"THE VESTIGIAL COCCYX a remnant of a now-missing tail, shows how developmental remnants reflect evolutionary history, revealing the complex association that leads to such structures being expressed (or not), which is itself an informative aspect of organismal history." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

"LICKING of human faces by dogs might be seen as a behavioral exaptation, which now aids in bonding and socialization but which has been hypothesized to have initially evolved in ancestral wolves as a submissive behavior that prompted dominant wolves to regurgitate food." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

UROGENITAL HOLDOVERS: "many well-known homologies of male and female genital structures—for example, the male glans penis and female clitoris; the scrotum and labia majora—are evo-devo traces of shared early origins." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

EXAPTATIONS. "Examples of classical structural exaptations include the lungs of early fishes, which in most osteichthyan clades evolved into swim bladders for buoyancy control, and avian feathers, which initially arose as thermoregulatory (insulating) structures but now also serve courtship (display) and locomotor (flight) functions." https://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn