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Evolving Rocks
SpaceAdmiral notes a new study making the claim that rocks have been evolving throughout Earth's history. "'Mineral evolution is obviously different from Darwinian evolution — minerals don't mutate, reproduce or compete like living organisms,' said Hazen in a statement announcing the study's findings. 'But we found both the variety and relative abundances of minerals have changed dramatically over more than 4.5 billion years of Earth's history. For at least 2.5 billion years, and possibly since the emergence of life, Earth's mineralogy has evolved in parallel with biology,' Hazen added. 'One implication of this finding is that remote observations of the mineralogy of other moons and planets may provide crucial evidence for biological influences beyond Earth.'"
What a misuse of terms.
Our Earth's surface is overwhelmingly shaped by biology - most of the surface carbon, for example (which on Venus is in the atmosphere) is in carbonate rocks, like limestone. There are whole island chains (coral atolls) made biologically. Soil results from biological processes (in fact, I would suspect that soil has evolved over time, as the organisms that make it have evolved). The marble in our public buildings results from biology (and metamorphism).
Could this be used to look for extra-terrestrial life ? Sure. Does this mean that the rocks are evolving ? No.
No its worse than that. They are using "evolved" to mean changed. Its like saying that spring evolves into summer, or a newspaper of paper mache.
It won't be long before the "Intelligent Design" crew start bringing up evolving rocks to show that "evolutionists don't know what they are talking about".