Albert Anderson says "the presence of numerous sauropod eggshells in Patagonia is certainly evidence that sauropods existed but not necessarily that they evolved,"1,2 while Gina Kolata in The New York Times quips that "evolutionary biology can be long on theory and short on evidence."3 The blame for this sorry state of evolutionary understanding lies at the feet of scientists and educators who just have not done their homework.
In 1886 Charles Darwin's research associate George Romanes showed how evolution works more by "survival of the survivors," than by "survival of the fittest," but no one could understand this at the time. The "struggle for existence," not in biology, but in science, consigned his work to obscurity.4 The theoretical high ground was seized by the mathematical population biologists, who confused everyone. The molecular biologists, who should have sorted things out, then became so obsessed with the race for...
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