.....there are similarities between humans and other life forms, the similarities being greater the more closely we are related to them. If you want to have a look at some of this info, I suggest you look at the human genome sequence and the chimp genome sequence, both of which are available on-line and you can do your own comparisons. If you run into difficulties trying to do this, I'll try to help out.
The second thing is that yes, it takes millions of years for "something" to evolve into "something" else, but we're not talking about an individual here. We're talking about a population. Offspring have a slight difference from their parents, then their offspring have another slight difference. Add all the slight differences together over the number of generations that there would be in millions of years and the changes seem vast. No need for any one individual to exist for millions of years.
Oh yeah, and the argument put forward in your class has absolutely nothing to do with how evolution is thought to occur, no matter what your peer thought.
Edited for spelling (sigh)
This message has been edited by Trixie, 06-05-2004 05:32 PM