Article 2
Was Darwin Wrong?
DAVID QuAMMEN
E
volution by natural :.election, lhe ccnlral concept or the
life's work of Ch:ule> Darwin, is :o theory. It's a theory
about the origin of adaptation. complexity. and diversity
among Eanh's living creatures. If you arc skeptical by nature.
unfamiliar will> the terminology of :,cience. and unaware of 1hc
overwhelming evidence, you might even he tempted to tistical
breakdown basn't changed much in two decades. Gallup interviewet·s posed exactly the same choices in 1982. 1993, 1997,
and 1999. The creutionisr conviction-that God alone.. :.nd not
an explanatory swtement that fits the evidence. They embrace
such an explanalion coniidcntly but
it as
1heir best available view of reality, ar least umil M>Llle severely
conflicting do1a "'some bener explanation mizht come alonr,.
Tbe rest of us gener.1lly agree. We plug our television, IntO
little wall sockets, measure a
by the lenj!th of Earth's orbit.
und in many Olher ways Jiveou1'lives based on tJlc trusted rculily
of those theories.
Evolu!ionary lheory, tllough. is a bil fSperies wa.' published. Owen made a major
mntribution. though, by advancing tbeconcept ofbomnloguc,,_
thai ;,, ;uperficially dill'erent but fundamentally similar ,..,rsions
of a ;ingle organ or t.mit. shared by dissimilar species.
Fnr
the fi\•e·digil skeletal
lUre of the vertebnuc
hand appears nol just in humans and :.1pc.\ :md raccoon!) and
l>et1N but a lso. variow:.ly modified. in curs and bats and
poi\Cs and lizards and tunics.. The paired "")ncs of our lower
kg, the tibia and the: libula. arc also rcp...,.,nted by bomologou.s
in other mammoh and in reptiles. anc.l
in the longoxtin(t hirrl-o·eptilc Arf'lweopreryx. What's the reason behind
such V(lried rccun·cnce of a le w basic designs? Darwin. with a
uod to Owen's "mosr interesting work," supplied the answer:
common de.o;cent, shaped by natural selection, modifying the
inhity of Michigan. is a long narrow room
in the naturul ;cicnc:e,o, building, well stocked with
and
ho"-'. including volumes about the conllicl between creationevolution. I arrived CaJT);ng a well-thumbed copy
vr
his own book un that Mlbject. Scie11ct 011 Trio/: Tire Cau for
Killing time in the rdcd n speciation event, or very nearly so, in their
cx1cndcd cxperimem on f111i1 flies. Frorn u small stock or ma1ed
female.' thcy eventually produced IWO di\linct fly populalion>
ad;tpted 10 different hnbit01 condilioot:
a willingnes.' to
when he's wrong.
Since the late 1970, Gingerich
collecled fossil >pccirncns of early whnlcs f1·on1remote digs in l}gypt and PakisU.u1.
WOI';king Wilh Pakisutni
he discovered Pukicrtus. u
continuum of life. all shaped ;ond diversified by evolutionary
fOI'CCS.
Even
belong 10 that continuun1. Some viruses cvoJve
quickly. some
Amo1lg 1he fa."ttcst
HIV.
its
method or replicating itself involves a high rate of mutation.
and !hose murarions allow the viru.> 10 assume new fomt>. Aflcr
just a few years of infeclion and drug trca11nem, each HJV
a unique vel':-o ion of Lhe vinas. lsololiOn within
one infected person. plus differing conditions and the struggle
to survive. forc;e, each version or HIY to evolve independently.
It's nOibing but a speeded up and microscopic ""'"' of wbat
Darwin saw in the Galapagos-except that each human body
is m1 island. and the newly evolved l'onns aren '1so channing as
tlocbes or mockingbirds.
Umle.rstanding bow quickly lilY acquires resist anile to antivita) drugs, such as AZT. bas been crucial 10 improving trcalmcnl by way of multiple drug cocktails.
approach has
reduced deoth.< due 10 IUY by severalfold since 1996."
ing to Palurnbi. •·and jt has grcmly slowed Lhc cvolutioo of chis
disease within p:.lticnts."
Insects and weeds acquire rcsislance to our insecticides
and herbicides through the same process. As we human.< try
lo poison them. C\'Oiution by Mtur.tl selection transfonns the
population of a mosqujto or thisrlc into :• new son of creature.
le-.s ''tolnerablc to thai particular poison. So we invent tutother
poison, then nnother. lt's a futileefl'o1. Even DDT, wi1 h it> ferocious and lcmg-lasling effects
ecosystems. produced
nics within a decade of its discO\·cry iu 1939.
mammal duting rrom 50 million years ago. who:-.ccar
By 1990 more than 500 species (includmg 114 kinds of mosquitoes) bad
to nt least one pesticide. Based
on these undesired resuhs, Stephen Pnlumbi has comrnenled
gl umly, ''humans 111ay be lhe wol'ld 's Uomina•lf evolutionary
force.'•
bones rcOect its membership in the whllle lineage bul whose
skull looks almost doglike. A former student of Gingerich's,
Hans Thcwissen. fuund a slightly more recent form with
webbed feet. legs suitabl&: for either
or swinuning, and
a
tOOthy snout. ·n,cwissen called it Ambulocews 1w twa.\,
re.._ist;rnt
Among mosl
of living
ur the ''walking·tuld-swimming whulc.'' Qjn_gerich and his
tcum rumed up sever.:tl more. induding Rodhoa:ws bn/(}(-hwhich was fully :a se-a creature. its legs more like
evolution proc.ccd.s
;.lowly-100 slowly to be observed by a single scientist within
a research tifetimc. But science functions by inference. not just
by direct observntion, and the inferenlial w ns of evidence such
as paleontology ;mel hiogcogl'aphy arc no less cogent sionply
because 1hcy'rc indirect. Still , skeptic.< of evolmionary lhcory
:lJ;k: Can
evolution in acrion1 Can it be observed io the
wild? Can it be measured in the labor.ttory?
111¢ answer i' yes. Peter nnd Ro.emary Gr.tnt. two Britishhom researchers who have spent
where Charle.\ Darwin
spent weeks, htovc CUI>tured a glimpse of evolution with their
long-tenn studies of bc:lk size among Galapagos finches.
William R. Rice and George W. Suit achieved something similar in their lab. thn>ugh an experiment io,•olving 35 generations
of lhc fruit fly Drosophila mrltmoflu>ler. Richard E. l.cn,ki
and his colleagues at Michigan Stale Urtiversity have done it
too, tracking 20.000 generation' of evolution in the bac1crium
Oippc". ib nostrils shined backward on the snout, h:llfway
to the blowhole position on a modern whale. The sc. belonging to
>ingle. unsplit lineage. \\r,th patience il can be seen, like thc
nw,-ement of n minute band on a clock.
Speciation, when a lineage splitS into IWO specie>. i> the
other major phase of evolutionary change, mak.inA possible the
another new species or whale.
9
ANNUAL EDITIONS
A Pakistani colleague found the fragment's other half. When
Gingerich filled the two pieces together, he had a moment of
humbling recognition: The molecular biologistS were right.
Here
and was uot taughl
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