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Author Topic:   Stupid evolution headline of the day
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


(2)
Message 1 of 2 (852550)
05-13-2019 3:27 PM


While I have no intention of actually updating this daily, I thought it would be useful to have a thread to capture examples of the disservice the press does to public understanding of evolutionary biology, through an apparently wilful determination on the part of new editors to understand as little as possible.
The particularly egregious example that prompted this:
Extinct flightless bird came 'back from the dead' because of a quirky evolutionary process
In case you're wondering what weird evolutionary process can resurrect an extinct species and are tempted to click, then don't bother, because obviously no such thing is possible.
The story being garbled is quite interesting, though. In brief, rails from Madagascar colonised the remote island of Aldabra. Here, safe from predators, they lost the ability to fly. As the climate changed and the sea waters rose, this flightless population was driven to extinction.
Fast forward several millennia, and the waters receded. A new population of rails arrived from Madagascar, and under the same selective pressures as their predecessors, evolved the same adaptations - forming the island's current population of flightless rails.
--------------------------------
I was thinking 'Creation/Evolution in the news' would be most appropriate.

Adminnemooseus
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Message 2 of 2 (852580)
05-13-2019 11:35 PM


Thread Copied to Biological Evolution Forum
Thread copied to the Stupid evolution headline of the day thread in the Biological Evolution forum, this copy of the thread has been closed.

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