Anatomy, Comparative; Embryology, Human; Evolution; Human beings -- Origin
Of the many and weighty arguments for the truth of this conception of
evolution I will for the moment merely point to the invaluable
evidence of dysteleology, the science of rudimentary organs. We cannot
insist too often or too strongly on the great morphological
significance of these remarkable organs, which are completely useless
from the physiological point of view. We find some of these useless
parts, inherited from our lower vertebrate ancestors, in every system
of organs in man and the higher Vertebrates. Thus we find at once on
the skin a scanty and rudimentary coat of hair, only fully developed
on the head, under the shoulders, and at a few other parts of the
body. The short hairs on the greater part of the body are quite
useless and devoid of physiological value; they are the last relic of
the thicker hairy coat of our simian ancestors. The sensory apparatus
presents a series of most remarkable rudimentary organs. We have seen
that the whole of the shell of the external ear, with its cartilages,
muscles, and skin, is in man a useless appendage, and has not the
physiological importance that was formerly ascribed to it. It is the
degenerate remainder of the pointed, freely moving, and more advanced
mammal ear, the muscles of which we still have, but cannot work them.
We found at the inner corner of our eye a small, curious, semi-lunar
fold that is of no use whatever to us, and is only interesting as the
last relic of the nictitating membrane, the third, inner eye-lid that
had a distinct physiological purpose in the ancient sharks, and still
has in many of the Amniotes.
The motor apparatus, in both the skeleton and muscular systems,
provides a number of interesting dysteleological arguments. I need
only recall the projecting tail of the human embryo, with its
rudimentary caudal vertebrae and muscles; this is totally useless in
man, but very interesting as the degenerate relic of the long tail of
our simian ancestors. From these we have also inherited various bony
processes and muscles, which were very useful to them in climbing
trees, but are useless to us. At various points of the skin we have
cutaneous muscles which we never use--remnants of a strongly-developed
cutaneous muscle in our lower mammal ancestors. This "panniculus
carnosus" had the function of contracting and creasing the skin to
chase away the flies, as we see every day in the horse. Another relic
in us of this large cutaneous muscle is the frontal muscle, by which
we knit our forehead and raise our eye-brows; but there is another
considerable relic of it, the large cutaneous muscle in the neck
(platysma myoides), over which we have no voluntary control.
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