Ok, here is the million dollar question. How is Macro-evolution a series of Micro-evolutions?

Question

Seriously, tell me how a fish like organism could "adapt" it-self into a monkey? Please tell me.

So, you guys' answers are that it happens, that there are many many stages, and that it is too complex to explain? Ok, so I am still waiting for someone to show me how a series of micro-evolutions could turn a fish into a monkey.

Answer 1

Here is your million dollar answer. There is no difference between micro and macro evolution. They are the same thing. Macro evolution is micro evolution, multiplied over millions of years.
Here's a few questions for you - why does you pet cat look like a lion, only smaller?
How do you think a Chihuahua and Saint Bernard were derived from wolves without induced adaptation?
These are visible signs to anyone that evolution is possible, and to a scientist, probable.
Given millions of years, evolution is inevitable, due to changing environment and climate etc as animals adapt to the changes.
If you want your evidence spelled out more clearly, read Richard Dawkin's "The Ancestor's Tale". It has about major 40 steps leading from unicellular life to humans. It makes sense.

Answer 2

well its only SOME fish that would "evolve" enough features that could lend iteself to being an air breathing creature and then into a primative mammal and then into a primate.

I guess if you go backwards and look at what is most closely related to primates, which were shrews from what I remember, and then what preluded them (all primative mammals were small things)....you can see how things are related to each other
....obviously there are MANY MANY intermediate forms that may not has lasted long (maybe only a few hundred thousand years) before other forms were "selected" over it...also MANY MANY of these intermediate forms did not go anywhere in evolutionary terms ie became extinct....only about 1% would survive to form anything that will "go on" to form other things....remember mammals really came into being after the extinction of dinosaurs around 60 million years ago.
I guess if you think about it, whales and dolphins are also mammals that have returned to the water......they look different to other mammals yet have lungs, give birth to live young and feed them milk and have vestigial legs (which tells us of their lineage)!! If they can return to the sea, surely some fish could adapt ways to survive out of water, some fish are warm blooded like us, so we know that that can evolve in them.......there are some "intermediate" type animals out there that can help tell us the story of fish to primate

Answer 3

A fish-like organism doesn't evolve directly into a monkey.

Try, like hundreds of thousands of intermediate stages in between ... from lobe-finned fishes, to lungfishes, to amphibians, to early reptiles, to later reptiles, to therapsids, to early mammals, to late mammals, to early primates to late primates.

And that's the short form. For the long form, try reading "The Ancestor's Tale" by Richard Dawkins. In it he traces this ancestral pathway backwards from humans right back to the earliest organisms ... so it does include the monkey-to-fish transition you are asking about (and keeps going). He includes the evidence, and the stages, and the explanations of the micro- and macro-processes.

The only difference between micro- and macro-evolution are two things:
1) Speciation events (branching);
2) TIME.

That's it.

Where's our million dollars?

Answer 4

There are many long books about this, and it's difficult to do your question justice with a short response, but here's a quick summary:

There are existing fish such as the lungfish, that have some ability to breathe air and travel across dry land. This may have evolved to allow them to escape predators, to access food on land, to lay eggs out of the water, or to travel from one isolated body of water to another.

It's easy to imagine an animal like the lungfish evolving into something more like a frog or salamander, which lives most of its life on dry land, but perhaps returns to water to mate and or lay eggs.

It's a short step from there to a completely terrestrial existence, giving rise to animals like snakes or lizards.

As a land-dwelling animal, the scales of a fish are suitable from some environments, but as the animals descendants spread into cooler climates, some of them may have evolved fur or feathers to keep warm. Instead of laying eggs and abandoning them, they may have carried the fertilized eggs inside their bodies, giving birth after the eggs had hatched. Because animals that are born live can't be very big if they're going to successfully get out of their mother without killing her, they tend to be less developed than animals born from eggs. So behavior would have evolved where the mother or both parents would give the babies extended care after birth. Evolving the ability to make milk means the mother can stay longer periods with her young and protect them better from danger.

At this point you have what are essentially mammals. The rest of the story is primarily about species changing to fit different environments. As more predators roamed the ground, some animals would have taken to the trees for safety. They would have evolved the ability to grip with all four feet and long tails to help in moving through the branches.

Voila! Monkeys!

This is of course an enormously simplified story of changes that took place over many millions of years.

Answer 5

I hate the words, micro and macro. Biologists call this process evolution and speciation. A seamless ( save punctuation ) progression.

Answer 6

It is basic biology. Many changes can add up to create a new species. This is easily seem with biology and genetics understanding. It has been observed happening it nature.

Answer 7

Show me the money first, then I'll tell you.