by Christyl Rivers

Created on: September 11, 2010

Charles Darwin's  1859 book was called On the Origin of species, and the word evolution itself appears no where in the original text.  Without knowledge of DNA, or even genetics, Darwin explores what he calls “natural selection.”  Who/what is selecting?  In nature, the environment selects by favoring those traits that gradually allow an organism to better survive and reproduce.

 Another scientist, Alfred Russel Wallace, had the same theory but it was Darwin who realized natural selection is key to species variation. Thus, Darwin is the one known to have inspired the little feet upon the fish on some bumper-stickers and pins.  In recognizing that variation occurs in nature over eons of time, these variations are favored (or not) by climate, geology, predators, polar shift, and more, Darwin was able to realize that all organisms are related.  We living things are miraculously varied, adapted brilliantly, and specialized.  The interpretation that we “descended” from monkeys is incorrect.

We are related, with more than 95% of our genetic code to chimpanzees.  But we also share most of our DNA with all carbon life forms to varying degree.  This is not a bad thing, it is an awesome and mind boggling miracle.  We belong.  We belong on earth, and unless we destroy our home planet, we will belong among all ever-evolving life-forms.

Sharks for example, have been on earth roughly 400 million years.  In that sense, they are far more evolved than we.  But we have changed their environment, and so after all this time, sharks could die out as a species.

Genius though he was, the Darwin fish is something the man could probably never envision. Charts used for decades that show fish triumphantly pulling themselves up to dry land, and those wherein a chimp is shown in stages to straighten upright until it assumes the Homo Sapiens forward looking determination stance are also false.  Life forms of fish and fauna, trees, birds, apples and apes are still with us. They have successfully adapted their own variations.  The famous Australopithecus, Lucy, and the recently discovered Ardi, a female Ardipithecus, whose remains are four million years old, are separated in time and form by more than a million years.  Our specific blend of hominids, Homo Sapiens, has only been around about one million years.  There is no missing link, just missing of the mark, in some interpretations

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