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Atrophy, Burial, Suppression or Total Loss in Evolution

Abstract

AN examination of a series of sheep embryos has indicated that the ungulates are not removed from the general mammalian plan to the extent usually indicated by the specialization of their fore- and hind-limbs in the earliest Tertiary period. In 18901 Wincza described a transient rudiment of a bony clavicle in the embryo of a sheep at the site of the fibrous raphe of Leisering in the muscle sheet spreading from the head to the trunk and forelimb. The study of a group of fossil forms by Cuvier, Darwin, Owen, Cope, Matthew and others has brought to light a number of extinct suborders, of which the Typotheria, alone amongst the adult ungulates, possess definite bony clavicles.

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References

  1. H. Wincza, Morph. Jahrb., 16, 647 (1890).

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  2. F. H. Edgeworth, ” The Cranial Muscles of Vertebrates” (Cambridge, 1935).

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HARRIS, H. Atrophy, Burial, Suppression or Total Loss in Evolution. Nature 138, 928–929 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/138928a0

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