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"Scientists are puzzled!, Scientists don't know why!, Scientists pull out their moustaches by frustration!"
(What scientists really say):
"Evolution, duh..., nice one, where is my coffee?, sip, sip, show me the pleopods"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So there are 0) aquatic animals, 1) land animals (evolved from 0), and 2) aquatic mammals (evolved from 1). You want to know if there are e.g. 3) land animals that evolved from aquatic mammals? Not that it isn't an interesting question, but what exactly would this tell us?
It might suggest the existence of loops in the evolutionary tree, making it more of a general graph.
- ring species
- species complexes
- hybrid species (turning the tree into a Directed Acyclic Graph)
- horizontal gene transfer via plasmids (between bacteria) or viruses
(edited for formatting)
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The closest example of convergent evolution in humans would probably be native populations in South America redeveloping darker skin tones to deal with sun burn the same way we initially had it in Africa. I don’t know the exact genetics, but it seems to be an independent adaptation rather than a holdover from an older population. There might be some others such as lactose tolerance that are less obvious.
I'd be very interested in hearing about that. My guess would have been that it was more a matter of the previously suppressed genes for dark skin coming back to the fore.
Another possible explanation (speculation) is that they met and mixed with yet undiscovered hominid species.
Ive always wondered this: has a species have an evolutionary history where they originated in land but adapted to living in water and then adapted to living on land again?
Well, there's the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_ape_hypothesis but I think it's generally written off by "actual" scientists.
> But it still poses the question: What makes the crab shape so successful that species keep trying to emulate it? That's not how evolution works. Survival of the fittest isn't about aspiration. It's what's left when the fittest are left standing.
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(What newspapers say): "Scientists are puzzled!, Scientists don't know why!, Scientists pull out their moustaches by frustration!" (What scientists really say): "Evolution, duh..., nice one, where is my coffee?, sip, sip, show me the pleopods"
BTW, if you search images by the text ‘carcinization’ or related keywords, you'll discover that it's a topic of memes. E.g.: https://i.imgur.com/t8GXYsB.jpg
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I'd be very interested in hearing about that. My guess would have been that it was more a matter of the previously suppressed genes for dark skin coming back to the fore.
I agree. Humans reached South (and even North) America only relatively recently in the evolutionary terms - 14-16 thousand years before present. It's not enough time for evolutionary processes to start kicking-in. Another possible explanation (speculation) is that they met and mixed with yet undiscovered hominid species. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_of_the_Americas
Several things have changed as recently as 11,000 years. “Examples for adaptations related to agriculture and animal domestication include East Asian types of ADH1B associated with rice domestication,[71] and lactase persistence.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_human_evolution