Re: Intriguing new concept regarding human origins


hugheaston01@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Evolution is a gradual process. But *mutations* are not.

Sorry, its you who is wrong. Darwin's theory of evolution does indeed
predict a process of gradual change, with one species gradually
morphing into other ones. However, thats not what you see when you look
in the fossil record. New species appear so suddenly that, as far as I
am aware, no fossils have ever been found capturing the moment of
transition from one species to another.

Aaaaaaaaargh!

Then the new species continues,
seemingly unchanged (sometimes for many million years), before abruptly
disappearing. Like I said, evolution occurs in a stepwise manner, not
through the process of gradual change that Darwin predicted.

There's a theory that the reason for this is the existence of
ecological 'niches'. Each species is adapted to optimally exploit a
particular niche, so further evolutionary change to that species
doesn't occur because it would leave it less well adapted to its niche.
However, AFAIK the only concrete evidence that niches even exist is the
fact that we see a stepwise pattern of evolution in the fossil record

No. Concrete evidence that niches exist is, for example, that we don't
eat grass, wood or phytoplankton. And so on.

(which could of course equally well be due to the process of directed
evolution I outlined). An argument against the existence of niches is
that, if you introduce alien species to an ecosystem then they are
unlikely to be as well adapted to any particular niche as a species
already there, so introduced species should almost always die out.

And they do. The ones that die out are just not the ones you hear
about. Try introducing penguins to the Sahara.

What
we see instead is that introduced species usually do manage to survive,
often so successfully that they multiply to plague proportions.

Since the new environment lacks predators and parasites for them -
organisms adapted to particular *niches*.

The reason this happens is easy to understand under my theory: it's
because the entities controlling these ecosystems have thought
processes and reaction times that operate on a much longer timescale
than our own, a consequence of their very large size and the fact that
their equivalent of nerve impulses travel much more slowly than the
signals in animal nervous tissue. In the example I gave (of forests),
taking both these factors into account means that one second of their
time would occupy about a day of our time. On that timescale, a century
of our time would correspond to just 10 hours. If you look at the
forest ecosystems badly affected by alien species introductions,
usually you'll find that they've been exposed to hundreds of introduced
species over the last century, and often they've been severely damaged
in other ways too, such as by logging. The reason some of the
introduced species get out of hand is because there is just too much
happening too quickly for the forest entity to cope.

-Hugh

.

Relevant Pages

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