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In humans, the vermiform appendix is sometimes called a vestigial structure as it has lost much of its ancestral digestive function.. Vestigiality is the retention, during the process of evolution, of genetically determined structures or attributes that have lost some or all of the ancestral function in a given species. [1]
Ileum, caecum and colon of rabbit, showing Appendix vermiformis on fully functional caecum The human vermiform appendix on the vestigial caecum. The appendix was once believed to be a vestige of a redundant organ that in ancestral species had digestive functions, much as it still does in extant species in which intestinal flora hydrolyze cellulose and similar indigestible plant materials. [10]
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2nd-century AD Roman statue of a Virgo Vestalis Maxima (National Roman Museum) 1st-century BC (43–39 BC) aureus depicting a seated Vestal Virgin marked vestalis. In ancient Rome, the Vestal Virgins or Vestals (Latin: Vestālēs, singular Vestālis [wɛsˈtaːlɪs]) were priestesses of Vesta, virgin goddess of Rome's sacred hearth and its flame.
The sudden startled arm-jerking response sometimes experienced when on the verge of sleeping is known as the hypnic jerk.. The evolutionary explanation for the existence of the hypnic jerk is unclear, but a possibility is that it is a vestigial reflex humans evolved when they usually slept in trees.
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Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation is an 1844 work of speculative natural history and philosophy by Robert Chambers.Published anonymously in England, it brought together various ideas of stellar evolution with the progressive transmutation of species in an accessible narrative which tied together numerous scientific theories of the age.
Early embryos of various species display some ancestral features, like the tail on this human embryo. These features normally disappear in later development, but it may not happen if the animal has an atavism.