My Funny Picture

Do people or mammals have any hidden pairs of rudimentary appendages inside the body (with bones in them)?

I'm doing a sci-fi art picture of a weird ancient monster which is related to vertebrate animals [fish-reptile-mammal] fighting an invertebrate [spider-like] one. The message is the ancient struggle between good and evil or what we as familiar beings perceive as good and evil. I want to know if I should give the vertebrate a third pair of appendages.

Public Comments

1. Well on this planet the answer is NO, Mammals (including people) only have two arms and two legs as a maximum, however as you said it is a Si-Fi drawing, then you can make it look like whatever you want, the limit is your imagination.
2. The whale, (cant remember which kind) has the remnants of a Femur........and we as humans all have the remainder of what started out to be a tail.
3. Yes, there is a tail bone, a remnant of our ape ancestors at the base of the backbone. Even the appendix is rudimentary.
4. No; most ancient vertebrates alive (like Myxines or lampreys) have no paired appendages at all, but only a rudimentary dorsal-caudal-anal fin (usually is continuous). Paired appendages are an "invention" of more modern vertebrates since sharks, bony fishes to all terrestrial vertebrates, and are always in the number or 2 pairs (or less, if rudimentary). I suggest you to search for pictures of lampreys if you want your picture to seem reaaly ancient (they don't even have jaws, but a structure similar to a sucker).