Eon, wrong-o. Not officially, but it's a genetic adaption that fails to address the concern that the adaption was evolved to counter in the first place. Ex: Bird eats kind of moth. Moth develops markings to ward off predators. Certain marking style doesn't scare predators. That marking style would be an evolutionary dead end. I think. I also think it's not the official term, but I can't find my bioanthro notes.
Eon, wrong-o. Not officially, but it's a genetic adaption that fails to address the concern that the adaption was evolved to counter in the first place. Ex: Bird eats kind of moth. Moth develops markings to ward off predators. Certain marking style doesn't scare predators. That marking style would be an evolutionary dead end. I think. I also think it's not the official term, but I can't find my bioanthro notes.
That's what I was thinking, but (after sifting through tons of religion vs. science garbage) I came across another take on the same question: An evolutionary dead-end is when an organism evolves so far that it is completely committed to whatever niche it's in, and can't adapt to changes anymore. They provided an example of some Australian fruit tree - it's fruit was so big it could only be eaten by megaherbivores (think elephant-sized or bigger). When all megaherbivores in Australia died out/migrated, the tree had no way to transport it's seeds, so the giant fruit would just rot and the seeds inside would never get the chance to germinate. Of course each post had a different (very vague) definition, so the question never really got answered.
it's because evolution isn't really a pre-determined process. Something would be an evolutionary dead end in one situation, yet would work fine in another.
