Convergent evolution

And why does he think he can break the mold of Christian notables puffing Darwin? The exploded but still tax-funded theories* of naturalist atheists? Dunno but get this: One of the biggest problems for neo-Darwinists is the origin of complex structures that appear suddenly in nature or the fossil record. My friend Dr. Stephen Meyer talks about this in his wonderful book, “Darwin’s Doubt.” He points out how, in the so-called “Cambrian Explosion,” the majority of animal phyla on earth appeared suddenly, and without obvious ancestry—almost as if they “exploded” onto the scene out of nowhere. Oh, so we’re allowed to know that now? As opposed to: Christians for Darwin will actually review Darwin’s Doubt, if anyone cares. Of course, Read More ›

No sooner did we hear that apes are close to speaking (no, they aren’t, and the claim is just another example of how, in our time, impossible ape achievement stories have replace impossible miracle claims)—than we are informed by National Geographic: Bonobo “Baby Talk” Reveals Roots of Human Language As we watch the bonobos, I think I hear a vocalization called peeping—a short, high-pitched sound bonobos make with their mouths closed. Peeping, which is very similar to the burbling of human infants before they form words, may tell us more about the evolution of human speech. That’s because while most animal sounds have a more narrow meaning, bonobos use peeping in several contexts, including eating, communicating danger, and resting, according Read More ›

From National Geographic: The golden jackal, which lives in East Africa and Eurasia, is actually two distantly related species—and one of them is a new species of wolf, a new study says. (Also see “Wolves Identified by Unique Howls, May Help Rare Species.”) Dubbed the African golden wolf, it’s the first new species of canid—a group that includes wolves, coyotes, and jackals—discovered in 150 years. Africa is also home to two other wolf species, the gray wolf and Ethiopian wolf. (Read “Africa’s Last Wolves” in National Geographic magazine.) Though golden jackals look mostly the same—the Eurasian animals are slightly smaller than the African ones, with a narrower skull and slightly weaker teeth—in-depth analysis of their DNA revealed two species that Read More ›

Here. A century or so ago, British anatomist St. George Mivart noted that Darwin’s theory of evolution “does not harmonize with closely similar structures of diverse origin” (convergent evolution). There is more evidence for Mivart’s doubts now than ever. According to current Darwinian evolutionary theory, each gain in information is the result of a great many tiny, modest gains in fitness over millions or billions of years, due to natural selection acting on random mutations. The resulting solutions should then follow inheritance laws, in the sense that the more similar life forms are according to biological classifications, the more similar their genome map should be. That just did not work out. Different species can have surprisingly similar genes. For example, Read More ›

Especially call Simon Conway Morris (right). Collect, Cambridge. From ScienceDaily: Extra-terrestrials that resemble humans should have evolved on other, Earth-like planets, making it increasingly paradoxical that we still appear to be alone in the universe, the author of a new study on convergent evolution has claimed. The argument is one of several that emerge from The Runes Of Evolution, a new book in which the leading evolutionary biologist, Professor Simon Conway Morris, makes the case for a ubiquitous “map of life” that governs the way in which all living things develop. It builds on the established principle of convergent evolution, a widely-supported theory — although one still disputed by some biologists — that different species will independently evolve similar features. Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: A few years ago biologists found that a prominent change in pigeon plumage, head crests, could be traced to a mutation in a single gene. Now the research team has found an almost exact repeat in the evolutionary playbook in distantly related doves. Evolutionary playbook? Doesn’t that imply a strategy? Oh wait, that’s heresy. Watch your language around Top People! Evolutionary biologist Michael Shapiro and his team from the University of Utah made international headlines in 2013 when they found that a prominent change in pigeon plumage, head crests, could be traced to a mutation in a single gene. Now, in the new advanced online edition of Molecular Biology and Evolution, the research team has found an almost Read More ›

O’Leary for News’s new series here at Evolution News & Views: A while back, I started a series here called “Science Fictions” that I began by asking a simple question: Why is the space alien understood as science but Bigfoot as mythology? The reason I asked is that, still lacking specimens of either entity, decade after decade, answers are likely to be revealing. Those answers help us see how “science” is understood, allowing us to interpret claims about the origin of the universe, life, human life, and the human mind. In general, naturalism (the idea that inanimate nature somehow created minds) seems to be the guiding principle of enterprises classed as science today, even though the evidence actually goes in Read More ›

Here. Researchers at the RIKEN Evolutionary Morphology Laboratory and the University of Tokyo in Japan have determined that the eardrum evolved independently in mammals and diapsids — the taxonomic group that includes reptiles and birds. Published in Nature Communications, the work shows that the mammalian eardrum depends on lower jaw formation, while that of diapsids develops from the upper jaw. Significantly, the researchers used techniques borrowed from developmental biology to answer a question that has intrigued paleontologists for years. Search Uncommon Descent for similar topics, under the Donate button.

From ScienceDaily: Moving one’s body rapidly through water is a key to existence for many species. The Persian carpet flatworm, the cuttlefish and the black ghost knifefish look nothing like each other — their last common ancestor lived 550 million years ago, before the Cambrian period — a new study uses computer simulations, a robotic fish and video footage of real fish to show that all three aquatic creatures have evolved to swim using the same mechanical motion. These three animals are part of a very diverse group of aquatic animals — both vertebrate and invertebrate — that independently arrived at the same solution of how to use their fins to maximize speed. And, remarkably, this so-called “convergent” evolution happened Read More ›