We like to think that we inherit half of our chromosomes from each parent, but we don’t. Many times it may be a 60/40 split or even a 90/10 split or anything in between 1 and 100.
Went to school with a guy who was the spitting image of his dad made over. His brother looked completely different.
After 500 years of generations from a father and a half brother, I doubt there are many ‘Leonardo Da Vinci’ chromosomes left in the mix....................
So true. May mother was one of 6 children. They were equally divided between the dark ones and the blond ones. The dark ones were clearly showing the Asiatic input from the Mongol incursions into eastern Europe. Her mother was from East Prussian petit nobility, and her father from Poznan(Posen) Poland. My husband was a clear blue eyed redhead with Scottish ancestry. I have hazel eyes. One son was dark haired, and the other lighter brown haired. They both have very dark brown eyes. I figure they got my weaker dark brown Asian eye gene which was suppressed by my European eye genetics, but was stronger than the pure light blue gene from my husband. I also think my husband had more than the 4% Neanderthal genes some of us are supposed to have.
As Paul Lynde once said, "looks aren't everything." Whether a trait is visible, or present and invisible, depends on gene dominance. We're all very nearly 50:50 from our parents. That's where it ends though, the skew toward one grandparent on each side of one's family tips the survival of chromosomes toward one side of each parental line, because 23 isn't evenly divisible by two (or anything else besides itself and 1). Closest possible split is 11:12.