Genetic evidence for macroevolution:
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/science/mchox.htm
FIRST GENETIC EVIDENCE UNCOVERED OF HOW MAJOR CHANGES IN BODY SHAPES OCCURRED DURING EARLY ANIMAL EVOLUTION
Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have uncovered
the first genetic evidence that explains how large-scale alterations to body plans were accomplished during the early evolution of animals.
In an advance online publication February 6 by Nature of a paper
scheduled to appear in Nature, the scientists show how mutations in
regulatory genes that guide the embryonic development of crustaceans and fruit flies allowed aquatic crustacean-like arthropods, with limbs on every segment of their bodies, to evolve 400 million years ago into a radically different body plan: the terrestrial six-legged insects.
The achievement is a landmark in evolutionary biology, not only because it shows how new animal body plans could arise from a simple genetic mutation, but because it effectively answers a major criticism creationists had long leveled against evolutionthe absence of a
genetic mechanism that could permit animals to introduce radical new body designs.
The problem for a long time has been over this issue of macroevolution, says William McGinnis, a professor in UCSD’s Division of Biology who headed the study. How can evolution possibly introduce big changes into an animal’s body shape and still generate a living animal? Creationists have argued that any big jump would result in a dead animal that wouldn’t be able to perpetuate itself. And until now, no one’s been able to demonstrate how you could do that at the genetic level with specific instructions in the genome.