“Evolution does not require genomic change. It can, and does, happen that way -- but it is not required. “
What!!! Is this some new (ignoring the laws of genetics) evolution science? Please explain to me and everyone else paying attention how (the mechanism) you get multiple generations without a gene to carry the information .
"Your ideas are LaMarckian.
LaMarckism was discarded over 130 years ago."
Sounds like name calling? I just wish I knew what this has to do with what we’re talking about!! Not really, It seems like investigating what this fellow thought is an attempt to distract, deride and catagorize my point of view (a prejudicial statement).
"You are under the mistaken impression that this is "a tiny little change".
Growing an entirely new digestive organ is not such a little thing, dear sir."
Well thank you for the dear sir, that almost sounds like respect, almost but not quite. I am under the impression that there is no change in the genome of this lizard and that this animal has always had an ileum and a cecum, and the ability to digest vegetation, if it would eat such food. I think (as stated in the referenced research article) that this species prior to isolation on this island had a diet rich in insects and limited in vegetation and that its digestive system having no need to segregate its meals for extended digestive processes had an ileocecal region celularly differentiated
but completely patent. This valve is a muscular organ and as is the case with all muscles if there is no stimulous to the muscle you have disuse atrophy. Hence no muscular fold you get a smooth transition from ilium to cecum and the appearance that no ileocecal valve exists ( and by the assumption of the investigators no plans in this lizards genome to make one ). The same type of thing happened in this lizards jaw and skull, I purport, that it used its jaw more and the muscles got bigger therefore requiring the stronger bigger bones.
Pseudo scientists call parts of anatomy that they do not know the function of useless vestigial organs, I think that tag, minus the useless, would apply however in this case.
"The fact remains, however, that this lizard grew a whole new body part."
Not a fact yet! Gosh, there is a lot of confusion on your side of the fence regarding what is fact and what is theory!
"This is not something one can simply brush off as an "adaptation".
No other member of this lizard's GENUS has a cecal valve."
Maybe someone should look a little harder and deeper in this lizards genus, I think they'll find one.
We’ll see, you just watch, sometime in the not to distant future there will be a follow up article on this lizard on page 62 of the paper in the bottom left corner retracting this ridiculous claim. Thats how it always is with these evolution scientist's earth shattering discoveries; Nebraska man and his cute family of four-from an extinct pigs tooth, piltdown man-man's and ape's skull and jaw hoax, lucy's bones found hundreds of feet apart and in different strattum, neandertal man now known to be completely human, coelacanth a 70 million year old fish that walked out of the water thought to be a missing link between fish and amphibians found in Madagascar fish markets and swimming at great depths in the Indian Ocean. The list goes on!
I've tried to catch the spelling errors so you won't be distracted.
If I've Missed any forgive me, wait forgiving is my side of the fence yours is crushing the weak and destroying those unfit to procreate.
Never mind.
Sincerely Dr T