Three waves of evolutionary innovation shaped diversity of vertebrates (stability, internet)
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Over the past 530 million years, the vertebrate lineage branched out from a primitive jawless fish wriggling through Cambrian seas to encompass all the diverse forms of fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals.
Now researchers combing through the DNA sequences of vertebrate genomes have identified three distinct periods of evolutionary innovation that accompanied this remarkable diversification.
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Sorry. I should have checked it more carefully before I posted. As to why I posted the entire article, I did that because some people are too lazy to actually click on a link, and it is easier to refer to what is said if the article is posted here.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by orogenicman
Because that's the kind of nice guy I am. Why do you care that I care?
Do you have comments or questions about the content of the orignal post?
Yeah, you get the usual trollish comments re: "typography", etc. whenever they're clueless about the subject and can't think of anything else to say. Kinda like internet 'scavengers' prowling for attention (or "bottom feeders" as the case may be).
Actually this research fits American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould's theory of "punctuated equilibrium", that most evolution is marked by long periods of evolutionary stability, punctuated by instances of branching evolution. His book Wonderful Life especially goes into fascinating detail re: the "Cambrian Explosion", aprox 530 million years ago (prior to the Santa Cruz research), when evolution went thru an incredible period of "experimentation", including many of these unearthly looking critters, which have no modern descendants today (although I suppose certain kinds of "trolls" might qualify)!
Last edited by mateo45; 08-29-2011 at 06:56 AM..
Reason: links..
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