Wednesday, January 7, 2015

#22) Big Idea 1 Term 41: Vestigial Structure

A vestigial structure is a structure in or on an organism that it obtained from evolution but is no longer needed. Common examples are foot bones in whales, coccyx on gorillas, or, in the case above, pinky toes on humans. The apes that are our ancestors used their smallest toes to grab onto trees for climbing but today our pinky toes do not affect our balance so they are useless.

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