Vestigial organs: Remnants of evolution

from http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826562.100-vestigial-organs-remnants-of-evolution.html?page=1

VESTIGIAL organs have long been a source of perplexity and irritation for doctors and of fascination for the rest of us. In 1893, a German anatomist named Robert Wiedersheim drew up a list of 86 human "vestiges", organs "formerly of greater physiological significance than at present". Over the years, the list grew, then shrank again. Today, no one can remember the score. It has even been suggested that the term is obsolete, useful only as a reflection of the anatomical knowledge of the day. In fact, these days many biologists are extremely wary of talking about vestigial organs at all.


This may be because the subject has become a battlefield for creationists and the intelligent design lobby, who argue that none of the items on Wiedersheim's original list are now considered vestigial, so there is no need to invoke evolution to explain how they lost their original functions. While they are right to question the status of some organs that were formerly considered vestiges, denying the concept altogether flies in the face of the biological facts. While most biologists prefer to steer clear of what they see as a political debate, Gerd Müller a theoretical biologist from the University of Vienna, Austria, is fighting a rearguard action to bring the concept back into the scientific arena. "Vestigiality is an important biological phenomenon," he says.