Evolution Rejects People.

Humans, like other large mammals, are showing signs of imminent extinction, claims a UK palaeontologist.

Large animals are dying out at a much higher rate than models predict, said Professor Michael Boulter.

He told the British Association's Festival of Science in London that he believed the human race would "soon" follow.

The theory comes from a mathematical model developed by Professor Boulter's research team at the University of East London.

They have used data from the fossil record to chart the evolution and extinction of all animals and plants that have died out during the course of the planet's history.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2000/festival_of_science/921748.stm

why do I feel left out?

You shouldn't. You're a large mammal.

What?

GOOD!

And I myself will not go extinct! Nor my off-spring if they take after me- I'm only 5'1" so I'm NOT a large mammal

Gonna go find a burrow to hide in till its over.

Evolution is not getting rid of people fast enough. Too many digestive tract tail-end orifices.

Humans have been living on "borrowed time" for centuries. Every few years some new potential species-killing plague crops up somewhere, and so far, we've held them back... but it's just a matter of time.

We stopped evolving (more or less), and that's not good.

How does evolution stop, is there a switch that says "you are evolved as much as possible, time to start devolving"?
This is evidence the theory of evolution is a broken theory.

Evolution fits a species to its surroundings. Humans started altering the surroundings instead... It's not evolution that's broken, it's people.

The environment is supposed to force evolution. If people change the environment, evolution "should" change people and animals to fit the new reality. Right?

Except we made the environment more or less ideal for what we are now, and therefore gave evolution no direction to take. Mutations occur all the time in humans... but they're without direction and uncontrolled, and usually end up not being any improvement (at best).

Evolution works quite slowly, whereas human alteration of the environment works quite quickly. Our environments are radically different than 100 or 200 years ago, but our bodies are little changed from 10,000 years ago. Unless we retool for sustainability, no particular environment will persist long enough to be adapated to.

compared to a finger monkey you are!!

Evolution doesn't stop. It just goes so slowly we are not aware of it.

True I guess... in any case... certainly some humans are devolving into monkeys...

The more I read Kevn's posts, the more I'm convinced hes not the same species as me, and therefore living proof of evolution..... Homo Sapiens Jesusfreakus

You really don't understand evolution at all do you?

I don't see how the lack of human evolution, due to technology, proves that the theory is false. Since the current environment is being considerably altered (made un-natural), I might be convinced that the theory of evolution doesn't apply anymore to the current time, but that doesn't invalidate the theory over the millions of years of having a fully natural environment.

And I think what people are getting at when they say "humans aren't evolving" is just that there isn't any natural selection going on anymore. I think there is "selection" still going on, but it's very forgiving (thus the population increases) and it's also quite "unnatural".

You fundamentally fail to understand what evolution is.

Here's a simple illustration to give you a sense of it, if you'll bother to pay attention:

Let's say you have two organisms of the same species, and one has better eyesight than the other. All else being equal, the odds favor the organism with the better eyesight surviving to adulthood and successfully producing offspring. Now, of course, the underdog might prevail, and the better organism might fail, in any given instance ... but over a vast number of them, the general trend will follow what I suggested.

Apply this to any traits, physical or mental, that might impact the organism's ability to survive to adulthood and produce offspring, and you begin to understand basically how natural selection occurs. This is what is meant by "survival of the fittest," but it's important to understand that that doesn't automatically mean "survival of the superficially stronger." It might, for example, be more important to survival when food is or can be scarce to be able to store up fat in the body easily than to have bigger muscles. In fact, our ability to get fat is an evolutionary adaptation! It just happens to be getting in our way now.

The reason it could be said that humans have stepped outside of natural selection (for the moment -- it won't last, I think) is that we have developed tools that enable us to ignore or at least work around our flawed traits. For example, I was born with severe asthma (although I've mostly overcome it as an adult). That trait probably should have killed me, and in killing me, it would have eliminated my ability to pass on said trait to future generations. Likewise, I happen to be nearsighted, and the simple fact is that uncorrected nearsightedness in the wild (where the stakes couldn't be higher) would at least put me at a significant disadvantage, again lowering my chances of surviving long enough to produce offspring. By contrast, in modern society, I can get by without even bothering to wear the correction that is available (since my nearsightedness isn't that terribly severe)!

Blindness, deafness, missing limbs ... in modern society with modern tools, humans can survive being born with defects that, in the wild, would simply kill them. This allows them to potentially pass on those traits to offspring, which in turn, I would imagine, allows a sort of reverse evolution ... I guess you'd call it? Devolution?

Anyway, Kevn, you really ought to learn at least a tiny bit about the theory before you try to "prove" it wrong.

Yes, and our current behavior with industrialization is really setting us up for a fall, but ... I Googled that author's name, located the book in question, and read a review to get a general sense of what it's about, and what I find interesting is that, according to the reviewer, the author makes the case that human beings started their march toward extinction not with industrialization, not even with the invention of agriculture, but 40,000 years ago.

I will have to read this book. I'd like to see the case he makes.

I am very impressed with the degree of knowledge some of the people have here regarding evolution.
I am certainly no expert, however there are some interesting factors that I wonder about.

For example what future effects will generations of alcoholism
have, or crack or meth for that matter.

I briefly scanned an article once in wired about evolutionary
splinter groups evolving based on differences in behavior.

The economic shifts of towards a more technological society
that brought changes in sociological tendancies.
With many of the best females choosing to reproduce with
very intelligent (esp. technologically adept) males.

This trend quickly led to a expanded role category of the intelligent technologically adept jock. Which is stll rare
yet larger none the less.

These are just some trends I think I perceived I may be completely wrong, C and C welcome.

More nonsense, Kevn. Evolution hasn't stopped at all. Speciation simply takes much longer than homo sapiens has been around. There is nothing written anywhere which says that Man is the ultimate pinnacle of evolution - we're just another branch on the tree of Life.

That said, there are many many times more species that have gone extinct in the last 4 billion years on Earth than exist today. Extinction is a natural part of things (which argues against a Designer unless he's fickle.)

What I'm interested in learning more about is how humankind may be artificially altering our own evolution - be it genetically, environmentally or through artificial means such as cybernetics and nanomachines one day. A large meteor led to the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, but I wonder whether a similar event would do that to humanity? We can create controlled environments and shelters, we can adapt to harsh environments, we will be expanding to other planets one day, we might even be able to deflect a meteor. We might end up being an entire race of Asimov's "Mules" -- genetic/historical aberrations.

Amazing, you typed all that as if it hasn't been said here upteenquadzillion times already. I think we all know what the grade school text books say, thank you anyways.

Heres all the evolution you'll ever need

http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/evolution_of_alcohol_synthesis/

finds of remains from as little as 20,000 years ago of humans show much thicker skulls than modern ones.

20,000 years in the history of our species is nothing. Just becuase humans live such a short time we cant see our own evolution doesnt mean its not happening.