Thursday, March 02, 2006
TalkOrigins webpage on Atavisms and Vestigial Structures
Retrograde Motion and Evolution, yesterday's post to the Personal Posts category, contained:
The TalkOrigins webpage (title link) gives a useful overview of both Atavisms & Vestigial Structures and has the following outline:
Model of an Internal Evolutionary Mechanism:
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/index.html
If the proposal of an internal evolutionary mechanism is seen as a Copernican expansion upon the Ptolemaic modern synthesis, then in terms of explanatory power alone, obvious areas to zero in on would be any evolutionary equivalents to retrograde motion.Vestigial Organs/Structures are equally interesting - hence the previous post of To See or Not to See: Evolution of Eye Degeneration in Mexican Blind Cavefish and a request in Wanted Papers for Modularity and sense organs in the blind cavefish*).
Evolutionary atavisms are among such suitable candidates and have been brought to the fore (for a day or two at least!) by John F. Fallon's kind response to a request for a copy of The Development of Archosaurian First-Generation Teeth in a Chicken Mutant.
The TalkOrigins webpage (title link) gives a useful overview of both Atavisms & Vestigial Structures and has the following outline:
1. Anatomical vestigial structuresJohn Latter
* Answers to criticisms of vestigial structures
1. Vestiges can have functions
2. Positive evidence demonstrates lack of functionality
3. Negative evidence is scientific when controlled
2. Atavisms
* Living whales with hindlimbs
* Newborn babies with tails
3. Molecular vestigial structures
4. Ontogeny and developmental biology
* Mammalian ear bones and reptile jaws
* Pharyngeal pouches and branchial arches
* Snake and whale embryos and with legs
* Embryonic human tail
* Marsupial eggshell and caruncle
5. Present biogeography
6. Past biogeography
* Marsupials
* Horses
* Apes and humans
Model of an Internal Evolutionary Mechanism:
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/index.html
*This paper now appears on the Main Blog (here) and contains details on how to obtain reprints
technorati tags: internal+evolutionary+mechanism, atavisms, vestigial+organs, talkorigins, evolution, structures, whale, hindlimbs, eye, marsupial
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