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By analyzing the DNA of many different people, it is possible to learn the approximate date and location of their common ancestor. Scientists have done this with mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from diverse human populations. Since mtDNA is inherited only from the mother, this traces humanity back to a common "mitochondrial Eve." Scientists say she came from Africa about 200,000 years ago (Cann et al. 1987), but the age may be mistaken, and Asia and Europe have also been suggested as the location, consistent with an origin from near Mt. Ararat. Mitochondrial Eve is consistent with Biblical Eve.

The "mitochondrial Eve," to which this claim refers, is the most recent common female ancestor, not the original female ancestor. There would have been other humans living earlier and at the same time. The mtDNA lineages...

...romosome sequence variation and the history of human populations. Nature Genetics 26(3): 358-361. Yuehai Ke et al., 2001. African origin of modern humans in East Asia: A tale of 12,000 Y chromosomes. Science 292: 1151-1153. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/292/5519/1151 See also Gib...

If evolution proceeds via the accumulation of small steps, we should see a smooth continuum of creatures across the fossil record. Instead, we see long periods where species do not change, and there are gaps between the changes.

...art of the original species into a new geographical area. The population genetics of small populations allow this new species to evolve relatively quickly. Its evolution may allow it to spread into new geographical areas. Since the actual transitions occur relatively quickly and in a relative...

Darwin, C. 1872. The Origin of Species , 6th Edition. Senate, London. http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-origin-of-species-6th-edition/index.html Previous Claim: CC200.1 | List of Claims | Next Claim: C...

The theory of evolution is useless, without practical application.

...locus mapping. Knowledge of the evolution of parasite virulence in human populations can help guide public health policy (Galvani 2003). Sex allocation theory, based on evolution theory, was used to predict conditions under which the highly endangered kakapo bird would produce more female off...

...rrill, G. Reesink, R. A. Foley and S. C. Levinson. 2005. Structural phylogenetics and the reconstruction of ancient language history. Science 309: 2072-2075. See also: Gray, Russell. 2005. Pushing the time barrier in the quest for language roots. Science 309: 2007-2008. Eisen, J. and M. Wu. 2...

Most mutations are harmful, so the overall effect of mutations is harmful.

...pre-existing variation .) They can be repeatedly observed in laboratory populations (Wichman et al. 1999). Other examples include the following: Mutations have given bacteria the ability to degrade nylon (Prijambada et al. 1995). Plant breeders have used mutation breeding to induce mutations...

.... Crowell. 2000. Estimate of the mutation rate per nucleotide in humans. Genetics 156(1): 297-304. Newcomb, R. D. et al. 1997. A single amino acid substitution converts a carboxylesterase to an organophosporus hydrolase and confers insecticide resistance on a blowfly. Proceedings of the Natio...

Mutations are random noise; they do not add information. Evolution cannot cause an increase in information.

...not just playing word games. The random variation that mutations add to populations is the variation on which selection acts. Mutation alone will not cause adaptive evolution, but by eliminating nonadaptive variation, natural selection communicates information about the environment to the or...

...1995. Evolution in experimental populations of bacteria. In: Population Genetics of Bacteria, Society for General Microbiology, Symposium 52 , S. Baumberg et al., eds., Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 193-215. Lenski, R. E., M. R. Rose, S. C. Simpson and S. C. Tadler, 1991. Lo...

Sex is too complex for its origin to be explained by evolution. Males and females would have to evolve independently, and any incompatibility in any of the physical, chemical, or behavioral components would have caused extinction. Furthermore, evolutionary theory predicts that asexual reproduction would be favored because asexual species can reproduce faster.

...(just as there are today), but these would affect individuals, not whole populations, and the genes that cause such incompatibility would rapidly be selected against. Many hypotheses have been proposed for the evolutionary advantage of sex (Barton and Charlesworth 1998). There is good experim...

...gans . Science 285: 1748-1751. Kondrashov, Alexey S., 1997. Evolutionary genetics of life cycles. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 28: 391-435. Paland, Susanne and Michael Lynch. 2006. Transitions to asexuality result in excess amino acid substitutions. Science 311: 990-992. See also:...

Recent research shows the mutation rate in mitochondria much higher than previously thought (Loewe and Scherer 1997; Gibbons 1998). The date of "Mitochondrial Eve," the common maternal ancestor of all humankind, was based on that mutation rate. The revised molecular clock indicates that she lived about 6500 years ago, not about 200,000 years ago as previously claimed.

...hat the control region varies greatly in substitution rates in different populations, but that the rest of the mtDNA shows no such variation (Ingman et al. 2000). Using mtDNA excluding the control region, they placed the age of the most recent common mitochondrial ancestor at 171,500 +/- 50,0...

...non-coding region of low recombination on the human X chromosome. Nature Genetics 22: 78-81. Loewe, L. and S. Scherer. 1997. Mitochondrial Eve: the plot thickens. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 12(11): 422-423 Parsons, T. J. et al. 1997. A high observed substitution rate in the human mitocho...

No new species have been observed.

...). The mosquito Anopheles gambiae shows incipient speciation between its populations in northwestern and southeastern Africa (Fanello et al. 2003; Lehmann et al. 2003). Silverside fish show incipient speciation between marine and estuarine populations (Beheregaray and Sunnucks 2001). Ring spe...

...nd host genotype on interspecies cytoplasmic incompatibility in Nasonia. Genetics 148: 1833-1844. Brown, Charles W., n.d. Ensatina eschscholtzi Speciation in progress: A classic example of Darwinian evolution. http://www.santarosa.edu/lifesciences2/ensatina2.htm Byrne, K. and R. A. Nichols, 1...

Plagiarized Errors and Molecular Genetics A Response to Carl Wieland by Edward E. Max, M.D., Ph.D. Copyright © 1998-2002 [Last Update: March 26, 2002] Dear Carl Wieland, I have just come across your article on the Web entitled 'Junk-making' viruses neutralize an evolutionary argument , in whi...

...ared from the Answers in Genesis site. ] [ Return to Plagiarized Errors and Molecular Genetics ]

...seudogene formation (shown in your Fig. 1) in which genes A, B and C present in early populations of humans, chimps and gorillas lead to pseudogenes in modern populations of these species. If you think that this model accurately reflects the current observations of pseudogenes, you seriously misunderstand the details of the pseudogene data. You...

The Modern Synthesis of Genetics and Evolution Copyright © 1993-1997 by Laurence Moran [Last Update: January 22, 1993] Many people do not understand current ideas about evolution. The following is a brief summary of the modern consensus among evolutionary biologists. The idea that li...

...werful and too convenient. During the first part of this century the incorporation of genetics and population biology into studies of evolution led to a Neo-Darwinian theory of evolution that recognized the importance of mutation and variation within a population. Natural selection then became a process that altered the frequency of genes in a...

...escribed by Futuyma; "The major tenets of the evolutionary synthesis, then, were that populations contain genetic variation that arises by random (ie. not adaptively directed) mutation and recombination; that populations evolve by changes in gene frequency brought about by random genetic drift, gene flow, and especially natural selection; that...

...mes the amount of DNA sequenced. Based solely on the theory of common descent and the genetics of known organisms, we strongly predict that we will never find any modern species from known phyla on this Earth with a foreign, non-nucleic acid genetic material. We also make the strong prediction that all newly discovered species that belong to th...

...esses, including complex genetic processes, the temporal distributions of surnames in populations ( Galton and Watson 1874 ), and the behavior of pathogens in epidemics. The nested hierarchical organization of species contrasts sharply with other possible biological patterns, such as the continuum of "the great chain of being" and the continuum...

...on (such as maize and S. malheurensis ). Some of the most studied organisms in all of genetics are the Drosophila species, which are commonly known as fruitflies. Many Drosophila speciation events have been extensively documented since the seventies. Speciation in Drosophila has occurred by spatial separation, by habitat specialization in the s...

...tionary history; thus, we should observe morphological change and variation in modern populations. Confirmation: There have been numerous observations of morphological change in populations of organisms ( Endler 1986 ). Examples are the change in color of some organ, such as the yellow body or brown eyes of Drosophila, coat color in mice ( Bars...

...tions. Confirmation: There have been numerous observations of morphological change in populations of organisms ( Endler 1986 ). Examples are the change in color of some organ, such as the yellow body or brown eyes of Drosophila, coat color in mice ( Barsh 1996 ), scale color in fish ( Houde 1988 ), and plumage pattern in birds ( Morton 1990 )....

...record of dispersion from the Tower of Babel," and "Evidence suggests a link between genetics and linguistics. One linguist, Luigi Cavalli-Sforza, suggested that genes and language diverged simultaneously into populations." Since the ICR chose to mention the geneticist Dr. L.Luca Cavalli-Sforza, an expert in the field of genes, migrations, and...

...d with the relationship of genes and languages: "The close relation with language and genetics would be consistent with the creation model. The possibility of a single split-up time would be an added bonus for the creation theory." What they leave out is the evidence summarized by Cavalli-Sforza and consistent with evolutionary theory: "Human e...

...Luigi Cavalli-Sforza, suggested that genes and language diverged simultaneously into populations." Since the ICR chose to mention the geneticist Dr. L.Luca Cavalli-Sforza, an expert in the field of genes, migrations, and languages, I was interested in what Cavalli-Sforza really has to say on the subject. Cavalli-Sforza disagrees categorically...

...umptions Insufficient knowledge of basic biology, molecular biology, biochemistry and genetics Misunderstanding of the scientific method Forwarding of untestable competing "hypotheses" Mischaracterization of evolutionary theory Misleading mis-quotes Fallacies of accent Distortion of scientific controversies Arguments from authority False analog...

...cent. Throughout the article, it is assumed that the fundamentals of biology (such as genetics, molecular biology, and developmental biology) are correct, especially those not directly dealing with the origin and evolution of biological adaptations. In creation-evolution debates this is not especially controversial; nearly all anti-evolutionist...

...e. those changes that are within the range of normal variation observed within modern populations." Elsewhere in his criticism (e.g., footnote 6 ), Camp bemoans the article's indifference to mechanism in explaining the evidence for common descent. Throughout the article, it is assumed that the fundamentals of biology (such as genetics, molecula...

...tor to descendent along vertical lines of descent. In the original work on population genetics it was assumed that all mutations were vertical transfer mutations. Horizontal transfer mutations occur when DNA is moved from one organism to another. Horizontal transfer can be a major source of evolutionary novelty. It is important because new gene...

...lleles so that we don't get confused; besides that's the standard term. If we look at populations of animals and plants we find that there are multiple alleles at 10-20% of the genes. In other words if we look at a given locus in all the members of a population about 10-20% of the time we will find more than one sequence at that locus. There ca...

...t to HIV infection and AIDS. The frequency of the mutant allele is quite high in some populations that have never been exposed to AIDS so it seems likely that there was prior selection for this allele. (See Appendix IV ) For a description of the recent literature consult the OMIM site for CCR5. Types of mutations and their effects Mutations are...

...the actual sequence of development would require a great deal more research into the genetics, comparative anatomy, and paleontology of beetles. The scenario does show, however, that the evolution of a complex structure is far from impossible. The existence of alternative scenarios only strengthens that conclusion. A few other points regarding...

...racteristics, but the same pattern shows up when looking at biochemistry, embryology, genetics, and even behavior. Although no genetic studies of bombardier beetles have been done, I can confidently predict that genetic similarities will closely match the morphological similarities which have already been worked out. Evolution also predicts pat...

...the intermediate stages are known to be viable by the fact that they exist in living populations. The scenario above is hypothetical; the actual evolution of bombardier beetles probably did not happen exactly like that. The steps are presented sequentially for clarity, but they needn't have occurred in exactly the order given. For example, the...