Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The human eye, showing the iris and pupil. In 1802, philosopher William Paley called it a miracle of "design."In 1859, Charles Darwin himself wrote in his Origin of Species, that the evolution of the eye by natural selection seemed at first glance "absurd in the highest possible degree". [3]
The evolution of color vision in primates is highly unusual compared to most eutherian mammals. A remote vertebrate ancestor of primates possessed tetrachromacy, [1] but nocturnal, warm-blooded, mammalian ancestors lost two of four cones in the retina at the time of dinosaurs.
The frontal eye, which expresses the PAX6 gene, has been proposed as the homolog of vertebrate paired eyes,or the pineal eye on vertebrates, the pigment cup as the homolog of the RPE (retinal pigment epithelium), the putative photoreceptors as homologs of vertebrate rods and cones, and Row 2 neurons as homologs of the retinal ganglion cells. [60]
Phylogeny: The vertebrate eye initially developed with a blind spot, but the lack of adaptive intermediate forms prevented the loss of the blind spot. Mechanism: The lens of the eye focuses light on the retina. Development: Neurons need the stimulation of light to wire the eye to the brain (Moore, 2001:98–99).
Researchers studying the opsin genes responsible for color-vision pigments have long known that four photopigment opsins exist in birds, reptiles and teleost fish. [3] This indicates that the common ancestor of amphibians and amniotes (≈350 million years ago) had tetrachromatic vision — the ability to see four dimensions of color.
Responsible for this process in mammals is the visual sensory system, the foundations of which were formed at an early stage in the evolution of chordates. Its peripheral part is formed by the eyes , the intermediate (by the transmission of nerve impulses ) - the optic nerves , and the central - the visual centers in the cerebral cortex .
Unlike the vertebrate camera eye, the cephalopods' form as invaginations of the body surface (rather than outgrowths of the brain), and consequently the cornea lies over the top of the eye as opposed to being a structural part of the eye. [4] Unlike the vertebrate eye, a cephalopod eye is focused through movement, much like the lens of a camera ...
In the book vertebrate evolution is studied utilizing comparative anatomy & functional morphology of existing vertebrates, and fossil records. The book is considered a classic and has been used very frequently as a college-level or university introductory level text on the subjects of basic paleontology and vertebrate evolution. [2]