From “Not So Fast: Lasting Evolutionary Change Takes About One Million Years, Researchers Find” (ScienceDaily, Aug. 22, 2011), we learn:
In research that will help address a long-running debate and apparent contradiction between short- and long-term evolutionary change, scientists have discovered that although evolution is a constant and sometimes rapid process, the changes that hit and stick tend to take a long time.
Give or take a little, one million years seems to be the magic number.
The problem seems to be that researchers were pouncing on small and easily reversible changes, and declaring them to be “evolution.”
This, in turn, is because they were desperate for actual evidence of Darwinian evolution – natural selection, acting on random mutations – as opposed to just plain evolution – stable change over time, due to a variety of causes.
A recent study was the first [!] to combine data from short periods such as 10-100 years with the fossil record over millions of years.
It determined that rapid changes in local populations often don’t continue, stand the test of time or spread through a species.
In other words, just because humans are two or three inches taller now than they were 200 years ago, it doesn’t mean that process will continue and we’ll be two or three feet taller in 2,000 years. Or even as tall in one million years as we are now.
No. And any significant, permanent change in height might require such massive restructuring that design is a necessary component for success.
This research supports the overall pattern of stasis and punctuational change. However, Uyeda says there may be different causal mechanisms at work than have often been proposed.
Then he starts talking nonsense:
“Evolutionary adaptations are caused by some force of natural selection such as environmental change, predation or anthropogenic disturbance, and these forces have to continue and become widespread for the change to persist and accumulate. That’s slower and more rare than one might think.”
If evolution that involved the development of complex new machinery depended on these forces, it would simply never occur. Natural selection cannot produce intricate machinery as needed, nor can environmental change. And “anthropogenic disturbance” has not been much of a factor before a few centuries ago.
It is sad to see a scientist talking like this, for the sole purpose of defending Darwinism.
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