Mosaic evolution

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Mosaic evolution (or modular evolution) is the concept, mainly from

• pelvic girdle took place well before there was any significant change in the skull, or brain size.^[4][5]
• theropod dinosaur, Compsognathus. Both fossils came from the Solnhofen Limestone in Bavaria. Huxley showed that the two were very similar, except for the front limbs and feathers of Archaeopteryx. His interest was in the basic affinity of birds and reptiles, which he united as the clade Sauropsida.^[6]
  The peculiarity here is that the rest of the skeleton had not changed.
• Meadow voles during the last 500,000 years.[7]
• The pterosaur Darwinopterus. The type species, D. modularis was the first known pterosaur to display features of both long-tailed (rhamphorhynchoid) and short-tailed (pterodactyloid) pterosaurs.^[8]
• Evolution of the horse, in which the major changes took place at different times, not all simultaneously.^[9][10]
• Mammalian evolution, especially during the Mesozoic provides a clear and well-understood example.^[11][12][13]

Brain size has shown intra-specific mosaic variability within its own development, as these differences are a result of environmental limitations. In other words, independent variability of brain structure is seen more when brain regions are unassociated from one another, ultimately, giving rise to perceptible features. When comparing current brain size and capacity between humans and chimpanzees, the ability to predict the evolutionary change between their ancestors was incredibly insightful. This granted the discovery that "local spatial interactions" were the main effect of the limitations.[17] Furthermore, alongside the cranial capacity and structure of the brain, dental shape provides another example of mosaicism.

Using fossil record, dental shape showed mosaic evolution within the canine teeth found in early hominin. Reduction of canine sizes are seen as an authentication mark of human ancestor evolution. However,

• Co-adaptation
• Coevolution
• Coextinction
• Convergent evolution
• Evolutionary developmental biology
• Parallel evolution

References