If Walter Garstang's suggestion is correct, and chordates did arise from a tunicate-like form by retaining the chordate features of their larval stag… - Jeffrey H. Schwartz

Greeks and Romans alike engaged openly in a variety of sanctioned atrocities, including adult human sacrifice. ...according to ...Cicero, human sacrifice was not restricted to the western Phoenicians but was widely accepted among Mediterranean societies as a pious act that would please the gods.

A micromutation can produce what Goldschmidt would have described as macromutation leading to macroevolution. Since mutations in homeobox genes are inherited in the same way that earlier fruit-fly population geneticists understood the inheritance of the alleles for wing length or bristle number, we can appreciate that evolutionarily significant novelty—which, in turn, could result in the emergence of a new species—can be passed on from parent to child as easily and simply as eye color.

The observation of reduction in complexity in many groups or organisms after a structure has emerged in a full-blown state makes sense in terms of homeobox genes.