Evolution...........?

Question

I'm trying to be very opened minded. I'm a Christian. I just want to know about evolution. Somebody explain it to me how we evoled from fish. Oh and here are some questions (answer these questions before you explain evolution) If you can't answer these questions, don't even bother explaining evolution to me. If we all evolved from fish, how come we don't see mutated looking fish now? How come we don't see any species going through those phases if they really exist?? And how come we stopped evolving now??

First of all Disiree, I really do want to learn how. If I didn't want to learn, I wouldn't have asked. If anything, I didn't want your lame response. If you are not going to answer my question, don't bother typing. Got it?

I have another question. If the fish that we see now didn't look like that millions of years ago, how come scientist have pictures of the evolution with fish that looks exactly like the ones we have now?

Answer 1

"check ot the Hovind theory"

ROTFLMAO! Stay away from "Dr. Dino", the convicted fraud, if you really want to learn anything about evolution. You've been given some good links, however.

As far as your "qualifying questions" (What's the point of that? Do you already suppose you know the answers?):

1. We did not evolve from fish. Monkeys or apes, either. We evolved from common ancestors of those critters.

2. Species are undergoing evolution, today. It is a slow process (without "phases") so you wouldn't expect to be able to see much change in a human lifetime in most species.

3. We haven't stopped evolving.

ADDENDUM

"for an example we had a fish why whould it became some air breathing animal?the chance give one mutation not a system of mutations can change a fish into a animal who breath air.if it had been the case mutation whould be so frequent that we'll can observe it. "

I take it you've never seen a mudskipper, a fish that breathes air. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudskipper

Answer 2

Mutated merely means changed and there are no phases. There are a variety of fish that have adapted to a variety of conditions. This diversification is evolution. The sea horse, the eel, and the coelocanth are all fish. The fact that all terrestrial vertebrates have four limbs (or vestiges thereof) tells of their common descent.

We see species changing, but the process is slow. It often takes thousands of generations to produce appreciable changes. You are looking at one generation of humans. It is like looking at one movie frame by hitting the pause button and saying it's not moving. Humans are evolving, but you can't look at the current population and see the process.

Answer 3

We actually haven't stopped evolving, but it takes billions of years. So no animal that you see will look weird to you, but see it a million years in the future and you won't recognize it.

Humans are actually loosing are pinky finger-- it really has no purpose if you think about it. It's getting smaller compared to early human skeletons-- soon in the future we won't have but three fingers instead of four. A dog's dew-claw used to be something like a thumb, but they don't need it either so it's going away.

So animals and people that look normal to you are still evolving-- the process just takes a very long time and we're all still changing.

Answer 4

Evolution is happening all the time, viruses evolve to become resistant to medicines.

For most species evolution by natural selection happens on a geological timescale and has to be driven by selection pressure, you will not see evolution by natural selection among large animals happen in a human lifetime, however you can see artificial evolution such as dog breeding

Oh and just because you are 'Christian' does not absolve you from getting an education. Most Christians worldwide have no problem with evolution and those who do just give religion a bad name.

Answer 5

"we all evolved from fish, how come we don't see mutated looking fish now? "

We do - Us. Our body plan is the fish's body plan modified by evolution. We have their spine, their limbs (fins), their rib cage, their skull, and so on and so forth.

"How come we don't see any species going through those phases if they really exist?? "

We do - amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals - all are species going through evolution.

"And how come we stopped evolving now??"

We haven't. All life is evolving, all the time. Because reproduction is not and never can be 100% error-free, change is continuous, and that is evolution, by definition.

Answer 6

How we evolved from fish (timeline of it) AND mutated looking fish: I'm going to assume that by "how come we don't see mutated looking fish now", you're asking why we don't look too much like fish (we do have their basic physiology - backbone, limbs).

Fish evolved into tetrapods about 360 million years ago (MYA); tetrapods are just animals that have 4 limbs. These limbs were likely frail fins and these tetrapods likely lived in shallow, swampy waters.

Then, about 20 MYA, they began to move onto land, although its possible that the earlier ones spent shorts times out of water. Over the next 30 MYA, backbones and digits (fingers, toes, etc) developed, with the other features undergoing changes in order to allow them to remain on land - sturdier legs, etc.

Then, sometime between 300 MYA and 250 MYA, two classes of tetrapod emerged, in addition to the amphibia that they had been coming - these were sauropsida (birds and reptiles) and synapsida (mammals). That's why we don't resemble them - for at least 250 million years, we've been evolving through a different line.

We don't see species going through these phases AND why have we stopped evolving: in all honesty, we do - they just spends millions of years in one part of it, so you won't recognise it for what it is now.

For example, say there's an animal out there that nature is pressing to adapt to live in water ... but, right now, all it has it a bit of thinner skin where gills will one day be. Because it could be like this for 10 million years, we will just think 'Oh, that animal has thinner skin round its neck'. It would never occur to us that its going to have gills in the future.

Similarly, we haven't stopped evolving - we're just stuck at this stage for now and don't see it happening. You will die with your appendix (assuming you haven't had it removed) because you were born with it, but eventually evolution will get rid of it because its useless.

How we evolved from fish (how evolution works): like I say, fish are very distant ancestors - we haven't been evolving from fish for 250-300 million of years. I've already explained the timeline (actually, some missing parts: primates eventually evolved as part of the mammal category and we evolved from these).

So, onto how we evolve. Essentially, an adaption occurs - this could be a mutation (ie, a sixth finger, prototype wings, etc) or or pressures nature is creating, like the fictious (we think) animal above needing to evolve to live in water again.

Say such a mutation occurs and someone has prototype wings - they're pretty useless stubs, right now. They breed and one of their kids get these 'wings'. Over the years, they'll either die out if its a bad thing or they'll prosper if its good thing. If it causes early life respiratory problems, it'll die out because the owners of them won't live long enough to reproduce; if it means you're less likely to catch cancer, the ones with them will live longer to reproduce more.

These wings are benefical to the species because, as it turns out, something in them *does* prevent cancer. They'll become more common and more mutations will occur - they'll grow bigger, maybe functional. At each of these stages, they'll have to be inherited and become widespread again, then go back to the beginning with a new change.

Over millions of years, possibly hundreds of them, workable wings will become a common occurance.

Answer 7

You should pop down the country some time and ask a farmer if he's ever seen or heard of a two-headed sheep. I have. It died fairly lively of course. It was two-headed because there was a mutation. Look at an introducing evolution book, there's a lot of stuff to explain...

Answer 8

from fish to humans took evolution about 350 million years, from your question it seems like you expect an answer to take a couple of sentences. is that reasonable?

evolution takes a long time. you don't see trees growing in a matter of days, it takes years. but you don't say that trees don't grow just because you don't see it, i think. you don't see mountains growing, or species evolving, in a matter of years - it takes thousands or millions of years. but again, just because you don't see it happening doesn't mean it's not happening. small, gradual changes are happening all the time. in organisms like bacteria, which have generation times in hours or minutes rather than years, it is easier to see evolution happening.

anyhow fish evolved into amphibians, amphibians into reptiles, reptiles into reptile-like mammals, reptile-like mammals into mammals, mammals into primates, primates into apes, and apes into humans. all the while everything else was evolving, too. some of the mammals evolved into whales, some of them evolved into bats. some of the reptiles evolved into dinosaurs, and some of the dinosaurs evolved into birds. you can explore the various relationships starting here:

http://www.tolweb.org/Vertebrata

Answer 9

We see plenty of "mutated looking" fish. Look at whales. They're mammals. Why are mammals swimming in the ocean? They still have bones left over from when they walked on land, millions of years ago. This is why they don't look like typical fish, because they weren't always aquatic animals. This is just one example.

Answer 10

evolution is the most stupid concept science had ever known.
for an example we had a fish why whould it became some air breathing animal?the chance give one mutation not a system of mutations can change a fish into a animal who breath air.if it had been the case mutation whould be so frequent that we'll can observe it. but if it hadnt been so frequent and this system of mutation is done that fish whoudnt leave his group, because, it's steal belong to it and steal can repoduce with it.so this system would be disseminated.the more genrations are until a natural selecion happen the more this system is disseminated in the group members.so when a natural selection happen no one from the group whould survive.but if the natural selection had happened early, we whould back to the first problem how much mutation is frquent?and how much evolution is intellgent to save this group from death in no time?
the mutation can chage some aspects of a creature, it would be good as protection against some toxics and it would be bad as deseases, but never can change the whole thing.
In addition,mutation never change the number of chromsomes.