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Wisdom teeth are vestigial third molars that human ancestors used to help in grinding down plant tissue. The common postulation is that their skulls had larger jaws with more teeth, which were possibly used to help chew down foliage to compensate for a lack of ability to efficiently digest the cellulose that makes up a plant cell wall.
Vestigial features may take various forms; for example, they may be patterns of behavior, anatomical structures, or biochemical processes. Like most other physical features, however functional, vestigial features in a given species may successively appear, develop, and persist or disappear at various stages within the life cycle of the organism ...
Vestigial teeth in narwhal. [101] Rudimentary digits of Ateles geoffroyi, Colobus guereza, and Perodicticus potto. [102] Vestigial dental primordia in the embryonic tooth pattern in mice. [103] Reduced or absent vomeronasal organ in humans and Old World monkeys. [104] [105] Presence of non-functional sinus hair muscles in humans used in whisker ...
The teeth were not labyrinthodont, and the group has classically been seen as separate from the Labyrinthodontia. There is some doubt as to whether the lepospondyls form a phylogenetic unit at all, or is a wastebin taxon containing the padamorphic forms and tadpoles of other labyrinthodonts, notably the reptile-like amphibians, or even very ...
A subsequent theory hypothesised the teeth at the end of each region were possibly "vestigial bodies" that became obsolete during the evolutionary process. At present, it has been theorised that evolutionary change is working to decrease the human dentition by the loss of an incisor, premolar and molar in each quadrant.
Female beaked whales' teeth are hidden in the gums and are not visible, and most male beaked whales have only two short tusks. Narwhals have vestigial teeth other than their tusk, which is present on males and 15% of females and has millions of nerves to sense water temperature, pressure and salinity.
Atavism has also recently been induced in avian dinosaur (bird) fetuses to express dormant ancestral non-avian dinosaur (non-bird) features, including teeth. [11] Other examples of observed atavisms include: Hind limbs in cetaceans and sirenians. [3] [12] Extra toes of the modern horse. [3] [13] [14] Reappearance of limbs in limbless ...
The most commonly cited example of a Silurian placoderm, Wangolepis of Silurian China and possibly Vietnam, is known only from a few fragments that currently defy attempts to place them in any of the recognized placoderm orders. So far, only three officially described Silurian placoderms are known from more than scraps: