Posted on 02/20/2003 2:30:45 PM PST by Junior
IT STARTED with a biologist sitting on a grassy river bank in York, eating a sandwich. It ended in the discovery of a “scruffy little weed with no distinguishing features” that is the first new species to have been naturally created in Britain for more than 50 years.
The discovery of the York groundsel shows that species are created as well as made extinct, and that Charles Darwin was right and the Creationists are wrong. But the fragile existence of the species could soon be ended by the weedkillers of York City Council’s gardeners.
Richard Abbott, a plant evolutionary biologist from St Andrews University, has discovered “evolution in action” after noticing the lone, strange-looking and uncatalogued plant in wasteland next to the York railway station car park in 1979. He did not realise its significance and paid little attention. But in 1991 he returned to York, ate his sandwich and noticed that the plant had spread.
Yesterday, Dr Abbott published extensive research proving with DNA analysis that it is the first new species to have evolved naturally in Britain in the past 50 years.
“I’ve been a plant evolutionary biologist all my life, but you don’t think you’ll come across the origin of a new species in your lifetime. We’ve caught the species as it has originated — it is very satisfying,” he told the Times. “At a time in Earth’s history when animal and plant species are becoming extinct at an alarming rate, the discovery of the origin of a new plant species in Britain calls for a celebration.”
The creation of new species can takes thousands of years, making it too slow for science to detect. But the York groundsel is a natural hybrid between the common groundsel and the Oxford ragwort, which was introduced to Britain from Sicily 300 years ago. Hybrids are normally sterile, and cannot breed and die out.
But Dr Abbott’s research, published in the journal of the Botanical Society of the British Isles, shows that the York Groundsel is a genetic mutant that can breed, but not with any other species, including its parent species. It thus fits the scientific definition of a separate species.
“It is a very rare event — it is only known to have happened five times in the last hundred years” Dr Abbott said. It has happened twice before in the UK — the Spartina anglica was discovered in Southampton 100 years ago, and the Welsh groundsel, discovered in 1948.
The weed sets seed three months after germinating and has little yellow flowers. The species, which came into existance about 30 years ago, has been called Senecio eboracensis, after Eboracum, the Roman name for York. According to the research, it has now spread to spread to several sites around York, but only ever as a weed on disturbed ground.
However, more than 90 per cent of species that have lived subsequently become extinct, and its future is by no means certain.
“It is important for it to build up its numbers rapidly, or it could get rubbed out — which would be sad. The biggest threat to the new species is the weedkillers from the council,” Dr Abbott said.
However, he does not plan to start a planting programme to ensure his discovery lives on. “The next few years will be critical as to whether it becomes an established part of the British flora or a temporary curiosity. But we will let nature take its course,” he said.
I'm waiting for evolution to make sense.....
waiting, waiting, waiting......
No observible proof in the fossil record ???
"Morality" becomes vain waxing by men.
If I am bigger and stronger and I desire your wife or any of your posessions, they are mine to take.. I "earned" them.
That's certainly not "immoral" How can it be in this context?
You're right. This is most definitely going to get interesting...
Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue.
Or essentially none in the last 530 million years if you look at a standard uniformitarian time scale.
Before you start waving your hands, remember that there are fossil sequences which, when arranged chronologically, clearly map out small stepwise changes which, when comparing the final part of the sequence with the first part, add up to the rise of whole new groups of animals which did not previously exist.
And those would be? I'm not aware of any transitional sequence of fossils which map out small step-wise changes documenting a process of evolution.
I evolved.
"Undenialable scientific fact" -- "hard sought" === evolution ???
"One man" (( GOD ??? )) --- "putting everything" === CREATOR (( "one man" )) creation ???
Dawinian slip ?
"Putting everything" -- is that like "Tiger weeds" ===
macro golfing (( driving )) // micro golfing (( "putting" )) ? ? ?
You play stupid - - - fantasy (( cheat // pirate )) === science // golf !
"little man" -- GOD?
Neither do evolutionists, if you mean what I think you mea by "spring full blown".
However, many "critters" have indeed arisen where they had not existed previously.
Quick, now, why do humans appear nowhere in the fossil record prior to a couple of million years ago?
Where are the horses prior to 40 million years ago?
Where are *any* large mammals prior to 65 million years ago?
Why are there *NO* mammals prior to 286 million years ago?
Where are the birds prior to 215 million years ago?
Where are the reptiles prior to 320 million years ago?
Where are the amphibians prior to 408 million years ago?
Where are the ray-finned fish before 438 million years ago?
Where are the fish of any type prior to 590 million years ago?
All these animals types were absent from the fossil record for a long, long time, and then later appeared -- and appeared after the pre-existence of different, more "primitive" types which could reasonably have given rise to them via evolution.
The conclusion is entirely obvious. And it has never been stated any more clearly than:
It is time for students of the evolutionary process, especially those who have been misquoted and used by the creationists, to state clearly that evolution is a fact, not theory, and that what is at issue within biology are questions of details of the process and the relative importance of different mechanisms of evolution. It is a fact that the earth with liquid water, is more than 3.6 billion years old. It is a fact that cellular life has been around for at least half of that period and that organized multicellular life is at least 800 million years old. It is a fact that major life forms now on earth were not at all represented in the past. There were no birds or mammals 250 million years ago. It is a fact that major life forms of the past are no longer living. There used to be dinosaurs and Pithecanthropus, and there are none now. It is a fact that all living forms come from previous living forms. Therefore, all present forms of life arose from ancestral forms that were different. Birds arose from nonbirds and humans from nonhumans. No person who pretends to any understanding of the natural world can deny these facts any more than she or he can deny that the earth is round, rotates on its axis, and revolves around the sun.Deal with it.- R. C. Lewontin "Evolution/Creation Debate: A Time for Truth" Bioscience 31, 559 (1981) reprinted in Evolution versus Creationism, op cit.
It's been just varieties of them (like your weed) since then.
See above.
That's all we've ever observed.
Only if you adopt an artificially restrictive definition of the word "observed". We have *observed* fossil sequences which, chronologically, map out the rise of new forms of life from earlier, different forms of life.
That's all that can be determined by SCIENCE.
You clearly don't understand science. Science is not simply sitting around watching stuff happen in front of your face.
A sea-horse will not become a race-horse, no matter how many million years you wait.
And yet, a fish became a race-horse in 400 million years. The fossil record is entirely clear, as is the DNA record.
Be a flat-earther if you wish, the rest of us prefer to learn what the evidence tells us.
Evolution is not about what's no longer needed (do we really need toes?), or what's more efficient. Rather, it's all about what lives long enough to produce offspring -- even if that means we survive with excess baggage and multiple inefficiencies, which is certainly the case.
Wisdom teeth are interesting, however. First, because they're yet another counter-example to the "intelligent design" conjecture. But what wisdom teeth seem to indicate is that evolution isn't a neat process. Our jaws are a bit too small for the number of teeth that most of us produce. This would seem to indicate that we are a "transitional species." Whether we will eventually get the jaw/teeth assembly to fit is an open question. I don't know why people with a perfect bite would somehow be more able to breed the next generation than the rest of us, so I suspect that imperfect teeth will be with us forever, or at least until we can artifically select the features of our offspring.
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