Dolphins have Genes for Smelling

Another curious tale of dead genes involves our sense of smell, or rather our poor sense of smell, for humans are truly bad sniffers among land mammals. Nevertheless, we can still recognize over 10,000 different odors. How can we accomplish such a feat? Until recently, this was a completely mystery. The answer lies in our DNA—in our many olfactory receptor (OR) genes. [...] Our own sense of smell comes nowhere close to that of mice. One reason is that we express fewer OR genes—only abou...

 Vestigial GLO Pseudogene

And the evolutionary prediction that we’ll find pseudogenes has been fulfilled—amply. Virtually every species harbors dead genes, many of them still active in its relatives. This implies that those genes were also active in a common ancestor, and were killed off in some descendants but not in others. Out of about 30,000 genes, for example, we humans carry more than 2,000 pseudogenes. Our genome—and that of other species— are truly well populated graveyards of dead genes. The most fam...