rocky mountain wrote:that is not evolution. its called genetics.
mutations do not prove evolution. they are just mutations. plus, the odds that two organisms that have the exact same, beneficial mutations mate and reproduce and start a whole new species are pretty slim. mutations are not part of evolution.
wiki wrote:Over many generations, adaptations occur through a combination of successive, small, random changes in traits, and natural selection of those variants best-suited for their environment.
again, is not evolution, but adaptation.
how come we don't see beneficial mutations anymore? all of our mutations nowadays are harmful. if it could happen then, why can't it happen now?
Ok, first of all, only one parent organism needs to have a certain genetic mutation for it to be passed on, not both. The chance of changes being passed on just became approximately one billion times more likely than you supposed it was. Mutations and their effects on the likelihood of an organism's and its offspring's reproducing and capability of surviving (adaptation) are at the heart of the theory of evolution. And even those two creatures in your example would not start a new species, it would still be just the same species as it was before, but some of them would have a slightly different phenotype than the rest and be slightly better adapted to their current environment and have slightly longer lifespans and their offspring would have a slightly higher chance of surviving and the mutation will spread through the population. They would still be the same species, though, btw, did you know that there are 20-something definitions for "species", it's not at all a clear-cut concept.
Adaptation is also not a process that is ever finished, because whenever one species has adapted to better deal with a problem, their adapatation most likely poses a problem to a dozen other species that will trigger start off the process in all of those species. Changes in the environment also lead to adaptations, those individuals who are better suited to the new conditions are more likely to survive and pass on their traits than the others.
rocky mountain wrote:extinction is not evolution. humans have driven many animals into extinction, and you don't say they became extinct because of evolution. the dinosaurs did not become extinct because of evolution either. i say it was a flood, you say it was an asteroid, either way, it was sudden, and does not prove evolution.
wiki wrote:All organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor or ancestral gene pool.
so what was that common ancestor. or is that the "missing link?"
the picture beside it is the "homonoids." who cares if we look like them. humans have more similar DNA to a chicken and E. Coli.
The dinosaurs did become extinct, and it was probably a pretty big event that lead to it. A major change in their environment most likely, and a few million years later we get a lot of fossils of mammals while before everything was reptilian. You know, that corresponds pretty well with what one would expect in light of the theory of evolution, the dinosaurs had been around for 100 million years or so and probably become highly specialized, eating only certain plants for example, you can see the same in any savannah, elephants, gnus, zebras, antelopes all eat different plants and don't have to compete for food with each other which is good for all of them, the downside is that if there is a small change in the environment and one of the plants disappears or has trouble growing, one species will be in a lot of trouble. If there's a big enviromental change and a major change in what grows and what does not, they're all going hungry, then the predators go hungry, and some sort of animal noone had even noticed before might come in and take over the whole operation because it's better adapted to the new climate.
From what we can see today it's pretty safe to conclude that mammals were better adapted to the new conditions that caused the dinosaurs to die out, and once the dinosaurs were in decline and did not pose a threat any more the mammals that were around could diversify quickly. How's that not evolution?
Also, what's your proof for that bold claim that our DNA is more similar to poultry or bacteria than with those now-extinct hominoids?