Just being real writes:
I see.
So if you and I both went to the train station (though we are starting from two different cities), and randomly started picking locations of travel, even though we both experienced the same weather and financial obligations etc... you are saying the likelihood is that with a million different choices at each rout that with in five hundred trips we would eventually both wind up at the same station, just by different routs?
No, you don't see. Where's natural selection in your analogy?
Here's a better one. Two human cultures invent the bow and arrows separately. Why? Because it is advantageous. The bows and arrows are similar in shape and appearance. Why? Because of the physical restrictions on how they can work effectively. The
environment. That's convergent invention.
Wolves and Tasmanian tigers evolved to fill similar niches. It is convergent evolution, not parallel. It is not a single route of mutations that can produce a wolf-like form. Their non-wolf-like ancestors were different, so they are like two groups starting off at different stations and going along zig-zag routes with an advantage for them in every stop on the route, and then ending up at adjacent stations in the same city, where they collect million dollar rewards.
The story of the lizards in the O.P. would be similar. They fill similar niches on different continents.
Edited by bluegenes, : No reason given.
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