What really stands out to me is this statement.
Over the years, researchers have discovered a small number of anatomical changes of the human body, including the increased absence of wisdom teeth. Lucas suggests that modern humans are evolving at a faster rate than at any point in the past 250 years.
You callin’ me primitive for flawlessly holding onto my Wisdom Teeth?
Wikipedia even calls them vestigial. Mine work just fine.
That’s…odd. I wonder what causes it. It seems that the artery is normally replaced by two other arteries during development in the womb.
I am curious though whether this is really “evolution”, as opposed to the response of the fetus to some unknown environmental variable (e.g., improved diet of the mother, exposure to endocrine-disrupting pollutants) that’s changed in the last century. Maybe one of the plasticizers or polyfluorinated precursors for making non-stick pans present in drinking water is turning off whatever genetic switch is supposed to trigger the degradation of the median artery during development, something like that. It would be interesting to see how median artery prevalence varies around the world or with pollution/economic development/etc.
There’s also this
It’s not just epigenetic, is it? Like the pointy bit on the back of one’s head?
Humans have been using their hands and fingers for as long as they’ve existed, but it seems the fingers are more intensely used now, as it’s become normal to spend the working day typing on work devices and then switch to your non-work devices and type all your leisure hours away. So yes to the extra blood. 
Yeah, I read that in the article. But…I have a hard time seeing how being able to type slightly better (in the last, what, 20-30 years that this has been relevant?) would lead to higher reproductive success and this trait of not having the median artery degraded during development being passed on.
Also, the study seems to have investigated cadavers of Australians aged 51-101 years who died in 2015/16, so were born between 1914 and 1965 or something - they (and even more so their parents) had their median arteries well before computers became common.
The apparent quote from the author about the artery being useful as a replacement in surgical procedures seems even more dubious (what fraction of a percent of the population would this even affect?), so I assume that quote was taken out of context.
You obviously don’t visit the same websites that I do… ahem
Not a biologist, but where is the selective pressure?
Mutations happen all the time. A black moth in a birch wood, among an otherwise white moth population may not be considered a fit mate, and would be avoided. It would also stand out to predators.
Along comes a coal burning plant. Birch trees in the area get covered in soot, and pretty soon the same black moth is getting laid left and right. He did not become more fit to the female moths, but due to the sudden selective pressure against white moths [which now stand out in stark contrast to the soot], his competition has rapidly dwindled, thereby distributing the black pigmentation mutation further than ordinary. Black moths become the rule.
Back to the arm vein. Remember science writers don’t need to know that much about the topic they cover, they just need to sound like they know more than the reader.
None of my family have wisdom teeth. Guess we’re just more highly evolved. Also we have independent control of right and left eyelids.
I guess it was pretty obvious bears dont get wisdom teeth.
And reversing itself with the switch to smokeless coal burning.
I can see the vanishing wisdom teeth, but what advantage does the retained artery give?
What year did you graduate from Xavier Institute?
If anything you might expect it to select against reproductive fitness, as people with enhanced circulation in their arm extremities can fap longer, as well as more frequently, thereby reducing their drive to secure a mate.
On a more serious note, perhaps it’s just fuller expression of the existing genetics in response to the warmer climate of Australia. The hands can play an outsized role in body heat management. It’s lost to the sands of time, and stupidity, but I recall a video demonstration of a person holding heat exchangers in their hands, which were piped to some regulated body of water. They would hold these in ice baths, and saunas and it appeared that they could endure the conditions far longer with the aid of the handheld heat exchangers.
Probably epigenetic , similar to genes for height being more fully expressed ? (I haven’t read the article ).
Epigenetic changes can take a few generations to start seeing large effects .
Another book, more about cultural evolution (WEIRD stands for Western, Educated,Industrialised, Rich, Democratic).
Don’t call me weird bro.
Well, that is essentially what evolution is. lasting changes due to many different reasons, including environment and diet.
We will see if it persists through our species over the long term.
Is it possible we could evolve an extra arm anytime soon? Maybe this extra artery is the first step?
Then maybe I can finally handle the workload people pile onto me and stop yelling at people saying ‘Do I look like I have three hands?’
My point is the “lasting” part, which wouldn’t necessarily (likely?) be the case if this is some developmental disruption due to some environmental pollutant or something, i.e., I’m curious whether this is something that could be passed on genetically.