yes, but where is all this new genetic information coming from?
saying evolution, DOESN’T answer the question...............
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf108/sf108p05.htm
“Lake victoria’s cichlid fishes: can random mutations explain them?
Lake Victoria is Africa’s largest lake (420 kilometers long, but only 69 meters at its deepest). It is also the home of more than 300 species of cichlid fishes. Ordinarily, that number of different species would pose no problem for the biologists — look at the 400 or so species of hummingbirds in Central and South America! Lake Victoria, however, is a very young lake, and all of these cichlid fishes are endemic. Therefore, they must have evolved rather rapidly.
Recent seismic surveys of Lake Victoria and piston cores from its deepest parts by T.C. Johnson et al have surprised everyone: Lake Victoria was completely dry 12,400 years ago. Nor were there deeper “satellite” lakes that could have served as refuges for Lake Victoria’s biota during extreme droughts. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the present-day 300+ species of cichlid fishes all evolved in less than 12,400 years.
This being so, can random mutations — the accepted source of evolutionary novelty — have generated so many new species in such a short time? That would be one new species every 40 years or so on the average.”
(Johnson, Thomas C., et al; “Late Pleistocene Desiccation of Lake Victoria and Rapid Evolution of Cichlid Fishes,” Science, 273:1091, 1996)
New genetic information comes from random mutations in information carrying segments of DNA. A mutation that changes the structure (and, hence, function) of a protein, or the quantity of that protein (which also affects its function) is a mutation that has introduced new information.
Mutations occur frequently, and some things—radiation, mutagenic chemicals—speed up the already fairly rapid rate of mutation. Luckily, living organisms have evolved a number of redundant DNA repair mechanisms, or the rapid rate of DNA mutation would make life almost impossible.
Germ cell mutations are the only ones that matter from the evolutionary standpoint. There are a lot of factors that impact whether a mutation in a germ cell will disappear or spread throughout a population. Every single person has about 150 to 200 new mutations that did not exist in either parent.