Aside from your absolutist dismissal of the possibility of macro-scale evolution, your response is a non sequitur. That major evolutionary changes take many generations and many mutations is not the issue. A morphological change resulting from even a single mutation requires corresponding changes in the phenotype, even for micro-scale evolution. This is no surprise, and highlights responses necessary in development and adaptation even aside from evolution. For example, if a fetus receives better nutrition than another and in consequence develops a larger newborn, developmental processes generally compensate, rather than producing a newborn with, for example, incomplete flesh coverage, vascular development, and so on. Thus, a simple mutation could produce a bone-spur in the wrist of a panda, and the resulting panda still manages to have hide and fur covering it. The false 'thumb' is useful for handling bamboo, so confers an advantage, favoring subsequent mutations that lengthen and define it. At no stage does it lack for developmental compensation.
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jhs
[This message has been edited by scarletohairy, 05-08-2002]
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