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Of, pertaining to, derived from, or possessed by, an ancestor or ancestors; as, an ancestral estate. "Ancestral trees." Hemans.

Ancestral. Grote.

Condition as to ancestors; ancestral lineage; hence, birth or honorable descent. Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible. Addison.

; as, architect, archiepiscopal. In Biol. and Anat. it usually means primitive, original, ancestral; as, archipterygium, the primitive fin or wing.

The wild dog of northern India (Cuon primævus), supposed by some to be an ancestral species of the domestic dog.

A cognomen formerly prefixed to his name by the oldest son, until he succeeded to his ancestral titles, or was knighted; as, Childe Roland.

regular flower to a regular form; - - considered by evolutionists to be a reversion to an ancestral condition.

of small wormlike animals, having cilia on the ventral side. The group is regarded as an ancestral or synthetic one, related to rotifers and annelids.

small lateral hoof on each side of the main central one. It is believed to be one of the ancestral genera of the Horse family.

rkable for the absence of ciliated disks. By some zoölogists it is thought to be like the ancestral form of the Arthropoda.

That form of evolution in which the truly ancestral characters conserved by heredity are reproduced in development; original simple descent; -- distinguished from kenogenesis. Sometimes, in zoölogy, the abrupt metamorphosis of insects, crustaceans, etc.

Of, pertaining to, or including, all the Gothic races. "Ancestral Pangothic stock." Earle.

A genus of marine annelids, believed to be an ancient or ancestral type. It is remarkable for its simplicity of structure and want of parapodia. It is the type of the order Archiannelida, or Gymnotoma. See Loeven's larva.

A return towards some ancestral type or character; atavism. Reversion of series (Alg.), the act of reverting a series. See To revert a series, under Revert, v. t.

olly or in part, towards some preëxistent form; to take on the traits or characters of an ancestral type.

a clan. And they painted on the grave posts Of the graves, yet unforgotten, Each his own ancestral totem Each the symbol of his household; Figures of the bear and reindeer, Of the turtle, crane, and beaver. Longfellow. The totem,the clan deity, the beast or bird who in some supernatural way attends tothe clan and watc…