Mystery of Ascia

Lee Berman · 21 Jan 2011, 21:21 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2011 16:21:13 -0500
Subject: (urth) Mystery of Ascia
Message-ID: <SNT123-W627159DF75471F563F9A2BCFF80 at phx.gbl>

Gerry Quinn wrote (21-01-2011 20:10):
> It would be foolish to take a law such as Dollo's as an absolute in any
> case - but it is a pretty solid general prediction if the conventional
> theory of evolution is valid.

>Antonio Pedro Marques: Not really, since our species is not known for being dependent on biological 
>adapation to the environment in the same way the others are.

There is something to what Antonio says but not only because humans use cultural flexibility to
adapt to our environments. It is also because our species is so young. As young as 50,000 years 
old but no more than 1 million years old depending on how you want to define things. Either way, 
not long enough for significant evolutionary change to take place, on the level that Dollo's Law
requires.

Anyway, Dollo's Law, while insightful, is pretty damn archaic. It was formulated before Mendelian
genetics was widely understood. And even 5HoC was written before a couple revolutions in modern 
understanding of genetics occurred. So Gene Wolfe didn't understand that most shorter term evolution
(like in the tens of millions of years) occurs by a shutting off of certain genes, not their
loss from the gene pool.

This is one of the reason our genome is mostly composed of "junk DNA". Codes for stuff that doesn't
do anything. But the genes are often still there, and sometimes they get accidentally turned on as we
see when those rare children are born with a tail or covered in a furry pelt.

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