Evolution

Misconceptions

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There are many misconceptions about Evolution, and this page should debunk a few of the more popular ones for you.

1. 'Evolution has never been observed'
This misconception is that there has never been an occurrence of a new species evolving from a past species, due to it's mutations. This is untrue though, as a new species of the Tilapia fish have been studied in the East African wild, and also with Drosophila pseudoobscura, or, 'The fruit Fly'. The fruit fly evolution is the most important, and seems to prove Darwin's theory. Theodosius Dobzhansky studied this fly in it's natural habitat and saw the chromosomes in the saliva gland of the fly differed in areas and, most importantly at different times of the year. By viewing these genetic differences, Dobhansky witnessed how different population's characteristics might change, and appear undesirable for members of a slightly mutated part of the species, and could see how natural selection could occur and vary in different habitats.

Human Beings are the result of evolution
Some people think that we're the end of the line, that no more evolution will occur after humans, and all species are in the process of becoming humans. This is completely incorrect though, because one of the keys to evolution is the environment that the organism inhabits. Lions, for instance, are the kings of the jungle. In the African savannah, food is easy to find and so are mates. There is no pressure on lions to evolve, so it is unlikely that it will. Another good example of this is the crocodile. They have not evolved for around 100 million years, and are unlikely to do so in the future. Again, they are top of the food chain and have no need to evolve.

There are no transitional fossils
This is an uneducated assumption, as there are. As expected, there are a few gaps between ancestors where scientists have not been able to recover the fossils, but there are plenty of transitional fossils. There are Human ancestors' fossils, although because evolution is such a slow process, it is hard to draw the line and split one ancestor from it's successor.