15 Evolutionary Gems

[justaman]

Nature has made the attached article/editorial freely available in the most recent issue... It is designed to offer some good and easily understood examples of natural selection/evolution that have occurred with appropriate references (all published in Nature) for all those people interested in having a pro evolution say in the evolution/creation debate.

Of course I realise that this will not convince those who are firmly creationists, but it is nice to have some definite examples for reference.

Edit: Mods feel free to move this to News and Articles if you think it more appropriate.

[Interactive Civilian]

Neat. Thanks for that. I'll definitely use some of that in my 11th grade biology class, since we are just starting evolution. Not that there's any debate or "controversy" about it here in Thailand, but it's always nice to have more examples to throw at the students.

Cheers.

[MotorToad]

Wait... There's a debate on this? Dubya tee eff.

All this time I thought FSM planted the bones...

It is a nice way to highlight the "HTF CAN YOU IGNORE THIS, YOU DUMBFUCK" aspects of our applied science, though.

[Bobber]

I read a few of them.
I especially founnd the one interesting that was about biologists introducing some bigger and badder lizards to six islands, leaving another six islands untouched as controls. The smaller lizards on the first six islands started living higher up in the vegetation and stuff to hide from the big lizards. And larger females of the big lizards were observed to be favored.

However interesting it is to read, I doesn't really seem like they are written in a way that a creationist would take as irrefutable evidence supporting evolution. In other words, the "gems" are not something that you can slam in the face of some crackpot YEC claiming that the almighty lord on-a-stick decided to evolve the creatures as they are, were and will become.

But for people already interested in the subject, I can see why you'd want to read it. Hell, as I said, even I (and I'm not specifically interested in evolution) found some of it interesting.