'Living fossils' and amber fossils disproves evolution (the idea all life came from a common ancestor)

[mjk45]

trashleg said:
I thought evolution was explained as simply certain alleles being passed on, which meant the alternate allele of that gene (responsible for a phenotypic trait) eventually died out.

Basic example: In those situations where being tall is more beneficial than being short, the tall people survive better and therefore have better birth rates, until eventually all the shorties die off.

Imagine all the potential traits that have shown through as the better ones in the history of biology, and evolution makes sense. The organisms which haven't changed in 50 million years may just have much the same gene pool now as they did then, thus the changes that occurred generation to generation were never permanent. So to simply say "they didn't need to evolve" could well answer the question, but hopefully my explanation makes it seem more realistic?

And the reason some modern organisms (ie apes and humans) exist at the same time? - could be explained possibly by the idea that as some of the population became more discriminate over their sexual partners, the rest of the population were still procreating with each other. Thus you get branching of the family tree, which has led to modern day differences.


Science is ever-evolving, don't be so quick to rule something out just because it doesn't make sense

height and weight are also influenced by factors such as nutrition  and the ready availability of meat etc. especially in the 20th century has had a profoundly influenced mankind's physical growth , your man/ape existing together today being explained by sexual discreetness isn't needed because mankind didn't evolve from apes directly but both likely originated from a shrew like ancestor.