![]() | This article possibly contains original research. (May 2023) |
In biology, an atavism is a modification of a biological traits structure or behavior[3] whereby an ancestral genetic trait reappears after having been lost through evolutionary change in previous generations.[4] Atavisms can occur in several ways,[5] one of which is when genes for previously existing phenotypic features are preserved in DNA, and these become expressed through a mutation that either knocks out the dominant genes for the new traits or makes the old traits dominate the new one.[4] A number of traits can vary as a result of shortening of the fetal development of a trait (neoteny) or by prolongation of the same. In such a case, a shift in the time a trait is allowed to develop before it is fixed can bring forth an ancestral phenotype.[6] Atavisms are often seen as evidence of evolution.[7]
In social sciences, atavism is the tendency of reversion: for example, people in the modern era reverting to the ways of thinking and acting of a former time.
The word atavism is derived from the Latin atavus—a great-great-great-grandfather or, more generally, an ancestor.
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