Devolution?

Question

With the fact that charcaricadon megalodon a type of ancient great white shark was about 50 foot long, plus the recent find of an ancient wombat jawbone put the size of the wombat at 5-8 times the size of modern day wombats, given the find of fossilised dragon flies with 50 inch wing spans, and fosislised giant spiders "megarachne servani" with a body index of 1.5 foot, is it fair to say that since the creatures on earth now are dimunitives in comparison, that we and the animals on this planet are quite clearly devolving and not evolving. There are so many examples of larger more powerful creatures, their modern day equivalents are tiny in comparison

Further, if an ancient form of man existed, in comparison to other ancient creatures to their modern day equivalents, is it not fiar to say he would have been a lot bigger than he is now, whatever allowed that wombat, that spider and that shark to be gigantic, why would not that have allowed the so called comman ancestor to be huge too?

I see, but people always mention the increase in human height as evolution, or viruses adapting,, and bacteria mutating as evolution, so surely the shrinking of na entire species sounds lieks the complete opposite

Further, if an animal responds to a change in its habitat, leading it to evolve or become extinct, then why do we appear to have lost the so called pre-cursors of the human race, homo habilius and erectus,

They lived in jungles and caves, last time i looked there are thousands of untouched jungles and caves, with no changes to these environments mr erectus and habiliuys should still be around,

creatures were allowed to reach a certain size so were platns becuase of the atmospheric conditions excess 02 and c02, with removal of these systems, things have become diminshed, and psossibly live a lot less longer and are smaller, and less powerful, sounds like devolution to me

Answer 1

The earliest remains of man's decendants were actually a lot smaller - how weird is that?
But devolution is more to do with politics than science!

Answer 2

I think you are forgetting that there has been a number mass extinctions throughout time and that whilst a number of species have become extinct a number have survived because they learnt to adapt to their suroundings and the environment.
Think about the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period and the changes in the environment. The Dinosaurs and other large creatures died, but the shark and crocodile survived.
Then again with the Ice Age, large creatures became extinct - whether by Man's hand or not we don't know for sure but that's when things started to get smaller possibly because man evolved and proably migrated long distances to find food once the mammoths died out.
You won't find a cave in the middle of a plain so man adapted and found a new shelter that was better and possibly more safre than finding a cave and hoping there wasn't a bear or wolf in it already.

Answer 3

The problem is that when people say "evolve" they mean getting bigger and better over time. They use "devolve," which is not a real word, to mean getting worse over time.
As a creationist I would say that larger plants and animals indicate conditions on the earth were much better before the flood. After the flood conditions worsened and things got smaller and died earlier. You're right in saying that remains of large plants, animals, and humans have been found all over the world. However, there is a limit on how big things can get. When you make something twice as big you make it eight times as massive. The more something grows the greater its own weight will become. Therefore you cannot get an ant that is the size of an elephant. I hope this answered your question.

Answer 4

Everything was big in the early days because of the conditions of the time. As plants and animals evolved and became more nutritious then animals could get smaller and more efficient.

But your argument is from a false perspective because a number of animals went the other way. Horses were very small and evolved to a larger form. Whales evolved from the hippopotamus and returned to the sea and became huge.

In talking about the various prehuman forms you ignore the simplest rule of evolution - survival of the fittest! It is also a lost cause to suggest that early man and his forerunners would have been a lot bigger when the fossil record clearly shows the opposite.

Scientific evidence is all around so you cannot rewrite things your way.

Answer 5

Yes, it does appear that many species have shrunk. However, evolution/devolution, that's just word play. Evolution is more to do with change and adaptation. If this is so then the 'evolved' creatures we see today here the results of change and adaptation.

If it were possible to view our ancient ancestors of millions of years ago we would generally see smaller creatures. While some creatures have got smaller, we, for example, have got bigger. Environment may well have had a role to play in the driving force of size, but evolve creatures have, by change and adaptation.

Answer 6

Evolution means change over time, not improvement.
Therefore devolution would mean to not do that. ie remain the same.

Any other uses of 'evolve' or 'devolve' are like 'quantum leap' erroneous uses of the term. ie. slang (misunderstood slang at that). OED be damned.

If change can survive it will reproduce. It is therefore likely that those changes most suitable for the environment will remain, whilst other less useful changes will not. LIKELY not certain.

Part -exchanging your '62 Oldsmobile for a Subaru Impreza wouldn't be considered a bad thing. Despite the reduction in size.

Answer 7

Earth's atmosphere before the great Flood of Noah had a much higher concentration of oxygen---there is scientific evidence for this---and that explains how insects---which breathe through their body---were much, much larger than their modern counterparts. Many plants and animals are also found to have been much larger long ago---6 foot beavers, 12 foot sloths and oxen as big as a small elephant. Many larger creatures on the Ark could not adapt to the post-flood conditions and died off. All we see is mainly extinction of many fully developed animal groups and no "evolutionary" intermediate fossil evidence has been found. In fact, there was a recent find of soft tissue and blood vessels in a T. Rex bone---how is that possible if they died off 65 million years ago? Pretty neat trick.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7285683
Evolution supposes that life forms become more and more complex, higher life forms but in actuality, life forms are degrading with every passing generation because of genetic faults ----we only have more "accumulated" knowledge than ancient people--they had more intrinsic knowledge. As far as being larger, it's quite possible although the diet and health/work conditions of the times may have precluded that. There are certainly many stories of giants or giant people in history--one of the Roman Emperor's was supposedly over 8 feet tall....Goliath in the Bible was a pretty tall fellow---9 - 12 feet tall--- as well as his tribe.

Answer 8

The theory of evolution states that creatures will adapt to their environment and take on characteristics best suited for living. Shrinking in size does not mean devolution, it merely means that either a species became more efficient with processing food, and didnt need to carry more bulk, or that they had to be more agile, etc.

Answer 9

Just because something is getting smaller does not indicate "de-evolution" (if such a thing exists, which it doesn't). It is still evolution, i.e. "change through time". You need to read up on how evolution actually works. It is not based on size, it is based on natural selection.

Answer 10

It'snot size that is the key, it is information.
The amount of information passed on from generation to generation is slowly decreasing.
So life is indeed devolving.
Evolution hypothesises that 'upward' change occurs by random selection acting on random mutations. However all observed mutations are either infromation neutral or lossy. There is no observed mechanism to provide the enormous amount of new genetic information required to evolve from (say) fish to reptile. (Nor is there any fossil evidence!)

Check out here for loads of articeles on information theory
http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/3012/