Resurrection Ecology Gives Life to Old Eggs

Ant writes "ABC News reports that scientists are bringing the past to life by hatching eggs once thought to be dead and producing colonies of animals as they existed decades ago. They are calling it 'resurrection ecology,' and it's a whole new field that quite literally allows scientists to observe evolution as it occurred, using animals that were quite different than their kinfolk today."

Comments

makes you wonder..

[qewl]

Just KNOWING that creatures an be a hatched after that long stalled period makes you wonder about what life really is.. Offtopic, but this seems to help imply that death and birth don't really have beginnings or ends. Kind of scary to me at least.

Re:Finally!

[Rocketship Underpant]

"There are numerous speciation events on record."

Most rational creationists accept that micro-evolution - the development of new species, sub-species, and distinct populations - occurs regularly, thanks to adaptive survival and the remarkable propensity of the genome to re-activate inactive DNA. I remember a recent example where a species of bacteria unable to digest lactose developed that ability within a few generations after being grown in a lactose-rich solution. The bacteria didn't gain this ability through random mutations, but by the activation of a previously unknown gene in the "junk DNA" part of the genome.

There's also an excellent article in the latest American Scientist detailing the specifics of spider speciation in the Hawaiian islands. There seems to be little doubt that this sort of micro-evolution occurs constantly.

However, many people (like myself) believe there is little or no persuasive evidence for macro-evolution, the spontaneous generation of radically new organisms marked by completely new genes, chromosomes, and physiological characteristics. There is pretty much no explanation of how such changes could occur at the molecular level. Michael Behe refers to it as a black box problem, since such macro-evolution can currently only be explained by treating very complex biological and chemical systems as black boxes. It's easy to imagine in macroscopic terms how a freckle might turn into an eyeball. It's impossible, however, to explain the process in molecular-evolutionary terms.

In other words, macro-evolution is not really a theory, because no theoretical framework even exists yet. Note that one need not be a creationist to reject macro-evolution and abiogenesis as viable scientific theories (though there are admittedly few other options).

Incidentally, I have read a fair amount on the subject, including the online article "29 Evidences for Macroevolution" and the relevant rebuttals. Nothing was persuasive; every "evidence" offered (1) were not necessary indicators of common ancestry, and (2) would not disprove the theory by their absences. They were simply interesting facts that could explained both by macro-evolution and by creation.

(Please don't flame me here, I'm trying to make some honest and intelligent points about a topic that gets a lot of crazy people into an irrational frenzy. Don't be one of those people!)