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Sharks and coelacanths have evolved exactly as much as humans. The difference is that they have kept a more-or-less constant body plan, and evolved details les
by moloch-hai 4y ago
Sharks and coelacanths have evolved exactly as much as humans.
The difference is that they have kept a more-or-less constant body plan, and evolved details less easy to see.
The monkeys have also evolved exactly as much as we have. Again, it is less easy to see the evolved differences from their ancestors, because their bodies are so superbly adapted to their way of life and so have not changed much.
- BlueTemplar 4y agoSurely this is wrong if we're talking about genetic drift which has no reason to be linear with time ?
- wizzwizz4 4y agoIt's also wrong if you're considering the number of generations available for evolutionary selection pressure. But it's less wrong than what it's rebutting, so I'm happy to say it's rhetorically correct. (It'd need to be a bit more precise to be pedagogically correct, à la lies to children, in my book, because it is still misleading.)
- moloch-hai 4y agoAcknowledging, generation time is a legitimate counter.
- svnt 4y agoThis is not true. They have not evolved/derived as much for a number of reasons including differing mutation rates, minimal environment change, selection against adaptation, etc. It is not visible vs invisible changes that progress at some fixed proportion to reproductive rate; that is a gross oversimplification and conceptually inaccurate. See e.g. Sewell Wright’s fitness landscapes.