In common parlance, "devolution", "de-evolution", or backward evolution is the notion the species generally evolve into more "primitive" forms by losing adaptations no longer necessary in a new environment.

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  • In common parlance, "devolution", "de-evolution", or backward evolution is the notion the species generally evolve into more "primitive" forms by losing adaptations no longer necessary in a new environment. According to this view, changes from one biome to another may usher in pressures to weed out an obsolete function which is no longer useful for survival after the transition, and that the probability of losing a organic function in a new biome, via the conventional evolutionary pressures to "evolve", is more frequent and explainable than the synthesis of a new organic function. The scientific evidence for modern evolutionary synthesis has disproved the idea of "devolution". The popularized connotation of the word "evolution" leads many to misunderstand Darwin's theory of evolution in thinking that "evolution" requires some sort of "increasing complexity". Yet the Darwinian theory of evolution does not reject the possibility of decreasing complexity as the basis for some evolutionary change. Early scientific theories of the history of life on earth tried to account for species diversity as a result of acquisitions of various adaptations to the environment, and these included Lamarckism and orthogenesis. However, modern genetically-based biological evolution theory asserts that evolution occurs by non-teleological mechanisms such as natural selection, genetic drift, and mutation; hence "devolution", Larmarckism, and orthogenesis are rejected by modern evolutionary synthesis.
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  • Accordingly, by every just rule of comparison and analogy, we may well declare that if there is any blood relationship between man and the anthropoid apes, it is the latter which have degenerated from the former, instead of the former having developed from the latter. I do not say that this is the true solution of this enigma; but I do say that there is far more scientific evidence in favour of this hypothesis than there ever has been in favour of the long popular theory than man is a developed animal.
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  • In common parlance, "devolution", "de-evolution", or backward evolution is the notion the species generally evolve into more "primitive" forms by losing adaptations no longer necessary in a new environment.
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  • Devolution (biological fallacy)
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