Intro: Charles Darwin was convinced that the evolution of complexity must proceed by tiny steps. Only tiny steps could be accumulated by natural selection. The process had to go slowly for it to work. Billions of years were needed. But Darwin was aware that this theory had a problem: flowers.
Tag: flowering plants
Evolutionary genomics with Richard Buggs: Why flowering plants are a mystery
Talk intro: Charles Darwin was convinced that the evolution of complexity must proceed by tiny steps. Only tiny steps could be accumulated by natural selection. The process had to go slowly for it to work. Billions of years were needed. But Darwin was aware that this theory had a problem: flowers.
Why did Darwin consider flowers an “abominable mystery”?
He was referring to their abrupt and unaccounted for appearance.
Evidence for insect pollination pushed back to 99 mya
That’s twice as long ago as previously thought. It is interesting how much theorizing depends on Darwinism rather than on sudden emergence and then stasis. And then suddenly there is no 50 million years to account for… A quite different set of problems appears.