New Scientist's recent cover article is a fascinating discussion of some new meta-analysis of several trains of study in evolution. It's not too thick with technical terms. The results are interesting and fascinating. Scientists seem to be disproving one of Darwin's big assumptions.
The really really short version is that evidence appears to indicate that climate change (and similar external events) do not cause evolution.
Plants, animals, and insects all migrate when the climate changes. And evolutionary changes do not correlate with those migrations. Evolutionary changes occur completely randomly, probably driven exclusively by internal DNA defects.
This leaves a big hole in evolutionary theory. DNA defects have shown no ability to perform the big changes, like the development of the eye or the lung.
It also makes it impossible to predict evolutionary change going forward.
Monday, October 18, 2010
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