Re: Evolution in action

Actually, all of your 3 guys are wrong. Though yours SS the most so, because it is just a paste/copy job without any understanding.

AustinM - evolution does not need to take a a long time, it can occur quite rapidly under the right conditions

Sencondly you are confusing evolution with speciation. The changes discussed for the lizard could potentially lead to a new species – and this too would be evolution – but they don't have to.

What is evolution? Here are some of the definitions from the TalkOrigins Website.

"In the broadest sense, evolution is merely change, and so is all-pervasive; galaxies, languages, and political systems all evolve. Biological evolution ... is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual. The ontogeny of an individual is not considered evolution; individual organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are inheritable via the genetic material from one generation to the next. Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportion of different alleles within a population (such as those determining blood types) to the successive alterations that led from the earliest protoorganism to snails, bees, giraffes, and dandelions."

- Douglas J. Futuyma in Evolutionary Biology, Sinauer Associates 1986

Evolution is a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations.

"In fact, evolution can be precisely defined as any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next."

- Helena Curtis and N. Sue Barnes, Biology, 5th ed. 1989 Worth Publishers, p.974

or from University of California Museum of Paleontology's Understanding Evolution website

“Biological evolution, simply put, is descent with modification. This definition encompasses small-scale evolution (changes in gene frequency in a population from one generation to the next) and large-scale evolution (the descent of different species from a common ancestor over many generations). Evolution helps us to understand the history of life. “

and Wikipedia:

Evolution is the process in which inherited traits become more or less common in a population over successive generations. Over time, this process can lead to speciation, the development of new species from existing ones. All extant organisms are related by common descent, having evolved over billions of years of cumulative genetic changes from a single ancestor.

So, adaptation if it affects a population is evolution. So adaptation of a population is in itself evidence of evolution.

Adaptation in itself is not evolution, and it is not evidence of evolution.

I think you definitely need to open up your mind and ask deeper questions to find out what is really evolution and what it is not.

Besides, even if it only weak evidence of evolution, it is still evidence. And when you add it up to the mountains of evidence for evolution in all other fields of science there really is no question as to the validity of the idea.

Like AustinM, you make the same mistake of not understanding what evolution is, it can be a subtle thing and it is just as meaningful as the grand gesture you are looking for. BTW, those are easy to find too, if you don't close your eyes to them.

SS, you just don't know what you are talking about.