It's said that if monkeys hack long enough on a typewriter, than they will inexorably end up writing something that makes sense.
Let's see if this is also true for scientists...



Tuesday, 26 August 2008

Parallel Evolution

Inspecting the beautiful palaeolithic cave art of the Chauvet Cave, scientists are shaken in their believes: How come that these drawing are as -or even more- skilful than paintings from civilisations that flourished 10-15,000 years later? Is something must be wrong with the dating of the paintings!

Inspecting the increasingly complete fossil record, it is now established for many developments that the view of a linear evolution needs to be supplanted by an iterative evolution of "developmental homoplasies and convergent ecological specialisations". Evolution is characterised by consecutive waves of radiation of species (many of which dead-end groups) into the same ecological niches - and not by an orderly step-by-step advancement.

Are humans part of nature, after all?

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