Claim CB901.2:
No new phyla, orders, or classes have been observed appearing.
Macroevolution remains unobserved.
Response:
- Evolution works almost exclusively by gradual changes. It has taken
hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary divergence to produce the
existing phyla, and probably hundreds of thousands of years at least
for classes to develop. For a new phylum, order, or class to arise
suddenly would be creationism, not evolution.
- Macroevolution is evolution at or above the species level, which
has been observed.
- Evidence is not limited to seeing something happen before our eyes.
Evidence for macroevolution includes the pattern of homology between
organisms, the fossil sequence (including abundant transitional
fossils), biogeography, and other evidence. Furthermore, there are no
plausible mechanisms that would prevent macroevolution, given the
variation which we observe. Indeed, plausible mechanisms leading to
diversity do exist (Lee et al. 2003).
Links:
Theobald, Douglas, 2004. 29+ Evidences for macroevolution: The
scientific case for common descent.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
References:
- Lee, P. N., P. Callaerts, H. G. de Couet and M. Q. Martindale, 2003.
Cephalopod Hox genes and the origin of morphological novelties.
Nature 424: 1061-1065
created 2003-8-19, modified 2003-8-28
