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atavism

From: The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | Date: 2008

atavism , the appearance in an individual of a characteristic not apparent in the preceding generation. At one time it was believed that such a phenomenon was thought to be a reversion of "throwback" to a hypothetical ancestral prototype. The term is seldom used today since science has shown that such abnormal characteristics can be explained by the inheritance of a pair of recessive genes . See Mendel .

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The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press

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