I hope that this doesn’t sound too dumb, but here goes...
I was watching a show the other day where anthropologists were tracing down mankind’s roots. They were showing that there is proof that one of mankind’s ancestors hunted buffalo because they had fossils of buffalo bones from a million years ago that showed tool marks. Buffalo identical to today’s. My thinking is, if mankind has supposedly evolved so much during this million year period, why didn’t the buffalo? Why would one organism be identical, or nearly so, after millions of years and another one supposedly change so drastically?
Yeah, sorry, that's dumb.
No, just kidding, actually a good question.
Homo sapiens is not your run-of-the-mill species. And our progenitors (Homo erectus et al.) were also quite unique - because they were tool-makers, and (at some point) could also articulate verbally (notice that I don't say "speak").
But in actuality, those "buffalo" certainly also did evolve. They cannot have been "identical," as you say. If the narrator of the documentary you were watching did claim "identical," then I would venture to guess that he was not a real natural scientist, or had been pursuaded by the t.v. makers to incorrectly state that assertion. (Why, indeed, bother to stress that the "buffalo were identical - what would be the point of that? The buffalo weren't the focus of the show, after all!).
Finally, for an anthropologist (and even for laypersons), any changes in anatomy of the buffalo aren't really of importance. Unless that's your specialization, you would tend to simply label them "buffalo" and describe them as "virtually unchanged" simply for the sake of convenience (just like t.v. reporters tend to call all firearms "assault weapons").
Regards,
How many books do you wish to read?
There are lots of reasons for the above. Primarily, all organisms are not the same, so they are affected by their environment in different ways.
Another is that all organisms are changing all the time, but the changes may be internal and not external.
Essentially, some organisms are extremely well suited to survival without changing much externally; others find enviromental nitches they can exploit with some change, which leads to further change and very quick evolution.
“why didn’t the buffalo?”
Why didn’t monkeys develop guns to protect themselves from tigers?