ANT 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 26: Lorisoidea, Paleontology, Evolution
Document Summary
Answer is both or neither -> discriminating between the two hypotheses sometimes fails because there are no morphological features that exhibit a common trend in all lineages. One example might work better for one theory than the other. Biological evolution is not goal oriented; not about progress. Any organisms failing to change may become extinct. These ideas on macroevolutionary patters and processes do not mean that biological evolution and natural selection are completely random processes. If natural selection operated randomly, then we would expect any kind of phenotype to occur within a lineage. The modern synthesis: putting all this stuff together. Not until 1930s and 1940s that evolutionary synthesis bridged the gap between laboratory findings and studies of populations in the wild. This synthesis involves the evolutionary consequences of random mutation, natural selection, genetic drift and gene flow. Thus encompasses ideas from three research fields: genetics, systematics and natural history, and palaeontology.
