Atavism is resemblence of features to -

Ref:Synopsis of Forensic medicine and toxicology (K.S.Narayan Reddy) 28th edition, page no.209 Atavism: The child does not resembles its grandparents. This is due to inheritance of charateristics from remote instead of from immediate ancestors, due to a chance recombination of gene which failed to express in the father, but not in child. Any mental or physical characteristics or tendency or disease peculiar to a remote ancestor may be inherited. mutation is a change in the child.