comparative anatomy Vestigial Structures

The skeletal structure of a human being (left) and of Boas and pythons, unlike most snakes, have a
a gorilla (right). Several differences allow the vestigial pelvic girdle complete with rudimentary
human to walk erect on two legs with a striding gait femur bones. These can be seen as anal spurs
rather than move in a knuckle-walking fashion like located on either side of the anal opening.
the gorilla. In the pelvis these differences include
shorter ischia, a broader sacrum, and broader,
curved-in ilia with a lower iliac crest. In the legs the
femurs (thighbones) are relatively long and are set
farther apart at the hips than they are at the knees.

Molecular Biology
Amino acid sequences of proteins are compared to
determine species' evolutionary histories. For
instance, analysis of the amino acid sequence for
beta–globin, a subunit of the protein haemoglobin,
shows a single difference between humans and
gorillas, but over twenty amino acid differences
between humans and horses.

Biogeography
The biogeography of islands yields some of the
best evidence for evolution. Consider the birds
called finches that Darwin studied on the
Galápagos Islands. All of the finches probably
descended from one bird that arrived on the islands
from South America. Until the first bird arrived,
there had never been birds on the islands.

Fossil Record
Our first example, the dinosaurs, went extinct
around 65 million years ago. Extinct means that all
members of a species or another grouping of
organisms have died off. Therefore, everything we
know about dinosaurs comes from the fossil record.