vestige

Etymology

From French vestige, from Latin vestīgium (“footstep, footprint, track, the sole of the foot, a trace, mark”).

noun

1. A mark left on the earth by a foot.
2. (by extension) A faint mark or visible sign left by something which is lost, or has perished, or is no longer present.
   the vestiges of ancient magnificence in Palmyra
   vestiges of former population
   The result, therefore, of this physical inquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning,— no prospect of an end. 1788, James Hutton, Theory of the earth, page 166
   Nevertheless in some cases, my original view, that the points are vestiges of the tips of formerly erect and pointed ears, still seems to me probable. 1871, Charles Darwin, Descent of Man, Chapter I
   Only ragged vestiges of glass remained in its windows, and great sheets of the green facing had fallen away from the corroded metallic framework. 1895, H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, Chapter VIII
   The chief remains of the Roman Calagurris are the vestiges of an aqueduct and an amphitheatre. 1911, “Angkor”, in 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
   The hovel stood in the centre of what had once been a vegetable garden, but was now a patch of rank weeds. Surrounding this, almost like a zareba, was an irregular ring of gorse and brambles, an unclaimed vestige of the original common. 1944, Miles Burton, chapter 5, in The Three Corpse Trick
3. (biology) A vestigial organ; a non-functional organ or body part that was once functional in an evolutionary ancestor.
   Any person seeing such a condition could not help being frightened at the conditions found, and it seems to me that that fact should lead us to think that the appendix is a vestige or becoming so. 1904, Transactions of the[…]annual session, volume 40, Homeopathic Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania, page 160
   Now this paired organ of Jacobsen began in reptiles and is well developed in many mammals. But in man it is a vestige, often disappearing altogether; and the two openings are closed. 1932, John Arthur Thomson, Riddles of science, Ayer Publishing, page 824
   This idea was confirmed by Scott, who performed a detailed comparative analysis of primate anatomy and demonstrated conclusively that the appendix is derived for some unidentified function and is not a vestige. 2007, R. Randal Bollingera, Andrew S. Barbasa, Errol L. Busha, Shu S. Lina, William Parkera, “Biofilms in the large bowel suggest an apparent function of the human vermiform appendix,”, in Journal of Theoretical Biology