" Evolution, embryogenesis: The body - object is only a trace--Trace in the mechanical sense: present substitute of a past that no longer is--the trace for us is more than the present effect of the past. It is a survival of the past, an enjambment. The trace and the fossil: ammonite. The living thing is no longer there but it is almost there; we have the negative of it. "

― Maurice Merleau-Ponty , Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France