(ORDO NEWS) — The idea of what our species will become in the distant future often leads to wild speculation about such prominent features as height, brain size and skin color.
However, subtle changes in our anatomy today demonstrate how unpredictable evolution can be.
Take something as mundane as an extra blood vessel in our hands. While we’re in the womb, the artery that runs temporarily down the center of our forearms doesn’t disappear as often as it used to, according to researchers from Flinders University and the University of Adelaide in Australia.
This means that there are now more adults than ever with an extra channel of vascular tissue running under their wrist.
“Since the 18th century, anatomists have been studying the prevalence of this artery in adults, and our study shows that it is clearly increasing,” said anatomist Tegan Lucas of Flinders University.
“The prevalence was about 10 percent in people born in the mid-1880s, compared to 30 percent in those born in the late 20th century, so that’s a significant increase over a fairly short period of time when it comes to evolution. “.
The median artery forms fairly early in all humans, transporting blood down the center of our arms to nourish our growing arms.
After about eight weeks, it usually regresses, leaving the work to two other vessels – the radial (which we can feel when we take a person’s pulse) and the ulnar arteries.
Anatomists have known for some time that this death of the median artery is not permanent. In some cases, it remains for another month or a little more.
Sometimes we are born with it still pumping blood, either feeding only the forearm or, in some cases, the hand as well.
Identification of the factors that play an important role in the processes of choosing a permanent median artery will require much more research.
Whatever they are, it is likely that we will continue to see more people with these vessels in the coming years.
“If this trend continues, by 2100 most people will have a medial forearm artery,” said Lucas, who led the study with colleagues at the University of Adelaide.
The rapid enlargement of the middle artery in adults is not unlike the reappearance of the patella , called the fabella, which is also three times as common today as it was a century ago.
However small these differences may be, tiny microevolutionary changes lead to large-scale variations that further define the species.
All of them are pushing us into new paths of health and disease that we may not be able to imagine right now.
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