In the conventional narrative of how evolution proceeds through survival-of-the-fittest and adaptation to new environments based on random genetic mutations, it is natural to expect that species with large, far-flung populations like ants and humans will become more genetically diverse over time than species who remain in one milieu. But is it true?
“The answer is no,” said Stoeckle, lead author of the study, published in the journal Human Evolution. In fact, the genetic diversity of most species on the planet “is about the same”, no matter their history of migration, relocation or proliferation.
The study’s most startling result, perhaps, is that nine out of 10 species on Earth today, including humans, came into being 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.
“This conclusion is very surprising, and I fought against it as hard as I could,” said David Thaler.
The picture we get here is that somewhere in the past, no farther back than 200,000 years ago, most or all animal species ‘got started,’ with a mitochondrial clock set to 0. There is evidence that these species ‘started with small founding populations and later expanded,’ and that extreme conditions — like the last ice age — can give rise to a subsequent expansion.
It almost resembles the Noah’s Ark scenario, doesn’t it? A cataclysmic flood wipes out all humans and animals on the planet except a small few of each species, who begin again to proliferate anew once the flood ends and the Earth becomes habitable.
But to really make this idea fit, we would not be taking species from the previous world before the catastrophe, because their mitochondrial clocks would not be set to 0. Rather, we have to see it as a new ‘seeding’ of species on the planet after a catastrophe wipes out most or all of the species that were there before. And who would be the ones doing the seeding? You guessed it. One or more advanced extraterrestrial races...<<<Read The Full Article Here>>>...
