Jed Rothwell wrote:
thomas malloy wrote:
There is no evidence of one species changing into another such that they cannot cross breed with the former.
Oh come now. Millions of species have done that, probably including some domesticated species. There have been none within recorded history, but the time scale is too short.
Check out studies of island ecologies. Evolution can proceed quite rapidly in an isolated community. I haven't got references at my fingertips and haven't got the time to go digging but I'm pretty sure I've read of longitudinal studies of islands which showed substantial changes in a quite short period (less than a century, IIRC). Not sure if the island residents diverged so far that they couldn't cross-breed, tho.
Dodos are, of course, the archetypical "island species". Anybody recall what the fossil record indicates about the date at which they first appeared? Of course, Thomas may claim they could still cross-breed with pigeons, and that would be hard to disprove (since there aren't any anymore), though the size difference, if nothing else, would have made it quite awkward.
