Galapagos finches.

2008-07-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

News flash AP: Finches on the Galapagos Islands that inspired Charles Darwin to develop the concept of evolution are now helping confirm it — by evolving. A medium sized species of Darwin's finch has evolved a smaller beak to take advantage of different seeds just two decades after the arrival of a larger rival for its original food source. The altered beak size shows that species competing for food can undergo evolutionary change, said Peter Grant of Princeton University, lead author of the report appearing in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

What most students and readers don't know is that this kind of "evolution" is not species creation. All the finches on the Galapagos Islands are genetically similar and can mate. They are not actually separate species, although they are classified as 14 different species for categorical reasons. Darwin saw these small changes and deduced that the large scale creation of completely new species, like for example the evolution of mammals from reptiles, happened in the same way. So when will we see the evolution of the Galapagos elephant? Probably never but such an event is the real guts of evolution, the emergence of a creative element: Something new has to appear. Can natural selection and genetic mutation create new organs and species? Theory says it can, but we only observe the small changes noted in the article above. This fools many people into thinking that the theory is proven. It isn't.

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Galapagos finches.