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An international team of scientists has discovered the greatest absence of evolution ever reported—a type of deep-sea microorganism that appears not to have evolved over more than 2 billion years. But the researchers say that the organisms' lack of evolution actually supports Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The findings are published online today by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The scientists examined sulfur bacteria, microorganisms that are too small to see with the unaided eye, that are 1.8 billion years old and were preserved in rocks from Western Australia's coastal waters. Using cutting-edge technology, they found that the bacteria look the same as bacteria of the same region from 2.3 billion years ago—and that both sets of ancient bacteria are indistinguishable from modern sulfur bacteria found in mud off of the coast of Chile.
http://phys.org/news/2015-02-scientists-hasnt-evolved-billion-years.html
[Abstract]: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/27/1419241112
(Score: 4, Informative) by ikanreed on Tuesday February 03 2015, @05:15PM
The theory of evolution posits a case where literally no evolution happens, called the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. It is an impossible to realize ideal, but as a population gets closer to meeting its requirements, its rate of allele change decreases.
What the scientists actually mean is that this organism's population has had proportionally very little change for the past 2 billion years compared to more intensely competitive organisms in shifting niches.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by HiThere on Tuesday February 03 2015, @06:09PM
They don't even mean that. They aren't comparing genomes, they aren't comparing proteins, they're comparing gross physical featues. And of those only the ones that fossilized.
So what they are really saying is "The gross shape is well enough adapted to it's life that there's been no observable change that fossilized.".
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