Hey everyone!
With a new course on us, there are a whole stack of new resources out. This can only mean one thing: errors.
Inevitably, when new resources are released, they will contain some errors. Use this thread to post errors you think you may have found and to seek clarification about their veracity.
I'll get the ball rolling:
Edrolo: Analogous Structures
This particular clip is one that has garnered a degree of criticism. For context, the presenter uses the human thumb and the panda thumb as examples of analogous structures. Though this is technically the case, many students have reported feeling confused about this, as both thumbs are derived from the hand.
As usual the devil is in the detail. In the case of the human, the thumb is effectively a finger (metacarpal + phalanges), which has evolved into a thumb; whereas, in pandas, the thumb is actually derived from one of the wrist bones (called carpals, specifically the sesamoid in this case).
The presenter of the video identifies the panda thumb as coming from a metacarpal. This is untrue and would have meant that the panda thumb is in fact a homologous structure, which it is not. He should have said carpal.
TL;DR: the panda thumb is indeed an analogous structure, derived from a carpal bone rather than a metacarpal.