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Many examples of these are vestigial in other primates and related animals, whereas other examples are still highly developed. The human caecum is vestigial, as often is the case in omnivores , being reduced to a single chamber receiving the content of the ileum into the colon .
Comparative study of the anatomy of groups of animals or plants reveals that certain structural features are basically similar. For example, the basic structure of all flowers consists of sepals, petals, stigma, style and ovary; yet the size, colour, number of parts and specific structure are different for each individual species. The neural ...
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]
A common example of homologous structures is the forelimbs of vertebrates, where the wings of bats and birds, the arms of primates, the front flippers of whales, and the forelegs of four-legged vertebrates like horses and crocodilians are all derived from the same ancestral tetrapod structure.
A so-called "cathedral" mound produced by a termite colony. Structures built by non-human animals, often called animal architecture, [1] are common in many species. Examples of animal structures include termite mounds, ant hills, wasp and beehives, burrow complexes, beaver dams, elaborate nests of birds, and webs of spiders.
Other examples of living fossils are single living species that have no close living relatives, but are survivors of large and widespread groups in the fossil record. For example: Ginkgo biloba; Syntexis libocedrii, the cedar wood wasp; Dinoflagellates (typified on coccoid dinocysts: occasionally calcareous cell remnants)
Tetrapod footprints found in Poland and reported in Nature in January 2010 were "securely dated" at 10 million years older than the oldest known elpistostegids [33] (of which Tiktaalik is an example), implying that animals like Tiktaalik, possessing features that evolved around 400 million years ago, were "late-surviving relics rather than ...
An example from the fossil record would be a specimen of Nimravidae, an extinct branch of carnivores in the mammalian evolutionary tree, if said specimen came from Europe in the Miocene epoch. If that was the case, the specimen would represent, not the main population, but a last surviving remnant of the nimravid lineage.