(March 16, 2014 at 3:03 am)max-greece Wrote:(March 15, 2014 at 4:22 pm)Heywood Wrote: Unguided evolution would be descent with change. There would be no cumulative selection. It would look like the random sentence generator in Dawkins' example.
The creature probably became a few different species. But if I had to guess which species is the answer you are looking for, I would say homo sapiens. I remember watching a documentary about human evolution and it featured a creature like this living near water. My second guess would be elephant.
If human beings lived in micro gravity for a long enough time, I predict we would effectively loose our legs. If we didn't loose our legs/feet they would become more arm/hand like.
If a designer is in the picture so to speak. He wouldn't start from your creature. He would have started at abiogenesis.
Well I would like to thank you for not cheating and looking it up.
Its actually one of 2 fancied originators of cetaceans (the other being a species called Mesonychid).
So one of the above, in all probability led to:
The Blue Whale!
Now tell me how that particular line of evolution would have ever been a predictable target state, actually from either end of the spectrum.
You can almost the whole story at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_evolution
That's the great thing about Whales. They preserve particularly well so we have an entire lineage to look at.
Really really cool max, thanks for posting that.