Vestigial Structures Whales

Examples of vestigial structures (also called degenerate, atrophied, or rudimentary organs) are the loss of functional wings in island-dwelling birds; The meaning of vestigial is remaining in a form that is small or imperfectly developed and not able to function : How to use vestigial in a sentence.

Feb 4, 2025vestigial structures, sometimes called vestigia, rudimentary structures, or remnants, are non-functional features fully developed and functioning in earlier species but serve little or no present. Of little or less importance (definition of vestigial from the cambridge advanced learner's dictionary & thesaurus © cambridge university press) Definition of vestigial adjective in oxford advanced learner's dictionary.

Vestigial is used to describe the small amounts of something that still remain of a larger or more important thing. Dec 24, 2025vestigial (not comparable) of or pertaining to a vestige or remnant; Vestigial is used to describe something, especially a part of an organism, that used to have a function but has now shrunk and is mostly not used anymore.

Apr 14, 2023vestigial is a term generally used to describe degenerate body structures that seem to have lost their original functions in the species over an evolutionary timescale.