From evolutionist Kerkut own homepage:
http://www.soton.ac.uk/~gk/scifi/evolves.htm
1. When I wrote "The Implications of Evolution" in 1960, I firmly believed in Evolution but thought that the missing pieces were being glossed over and that students should see the points that required further research.
(see my www entry Implications of evolution under "Evolutionary chat by Gerald").
Advances have been made over the intervening 40 years and we now know a lot more.
2. It is believed that the Universe was formed about 15 Billion (10 9) years ago; the solar system about 5 Billion years ago; and that life arose as sulphur metabolizing bacteria around the thermal deep sea vents 3.5 Billion years ago.
3. Most experts think that it is quite likely that Life has arisen more than once in the Universe.
4. The accuracy of radioactive dating of fossils has been greatly improved but the earliest Precambrian fossils are only about 1 Billion years old (guessed), and the earliest Cambrian fossils about 530 Million years old.
5. The Invertebrate Precambrian fossils are already quite complex and many fossil remains of jellyfish, sponges , worms, echinoderms and arthropods are there. Quite a lot of Evolution must have gone on from 3.5 Billion years ago to 1 Billion years ago and as yet we don't know much about it.
6. The greatest advance has come in studying DNA, and various Genome projects are well underway. We now know the complete Genome (DNA map) of a virus, a yeast and a bacterium; we will soon have the map for a nematode; other work is going on the DNA of Drosophila and various other animal groups.
A new branch of science has developed working out, from the DNA maps, how closely different animal groups are probably related to each other.
7. It seem that most Metazoa have similar cell biochemistry and so the Genomes for this will be similar.
Nerves, neuro transmitters, second messengers, hormones, muscles, connective tissue, etc are similar and so will have similar Genomes.
8. There is still the problem of Convergent Evolution.
Do the Genome similarities indicate a linear relationship or could some similarities have evolved independently ?
Convergence of phenotypes (what the animal looks like and how it lives) implies convergence of the genotypes (the genes in the genome).
We know that there can be some DNA crossing from viruses and bacteria to the host DNA.
9. Convergent Evolution is being considered (at a higher level) by Archaologists who generally think that some patterns of human behaviour such as building pyramids (Egypt and Mexico); building boats from reeds (Egypt and Peru); building stone circles; jewellery patterns; have developed independently.
It depends on the material available and what works.
Can the same be said for parts of the DNA genomes ? After all there are a limited number of solutions to Life's problems and a lot of mixing and matching can happen in a Billion years !
Time will tell.
