Evolution Can Occur Much Faster Than Previously Thought (ox.ac.uk)

An anonymous reader writes: An Oxford study on chickens discovered that evolution can make significant changes to a genome in as little as 15 years. "For a long time scientists have believed that the rate of change in the mitochondrial genome was never faster than about 2% per million years. The identification of these mutations shows that the rate of evolution in this pedigree is in fact 15 times faster." Professor Greger Larson, senior author on the study, said, "Our observations reveal that evolution is always moving quickly but we tend not to see it because we typically measure it over longer time periods."

Comments

Re:Mutation only, not evolution

[viperidaenz]

The chickens with mutations were kept for further study and their genes live on.
The other chickens are thrown away.

There appears to be a survival advantage.

Re: Fossils

[Michael Woodhams]

OK, Jane has evidence for the absence of a certain class of gorilla (highly visible gorillas.) She has placed constraints on the properties of any gorillas in the town (that they not be highly visible.) She can't say anything useful about presence or absence of ninja gorillas.