A firm step from water to land
Article Abstract:
The rare transitional fossils that apparently capture the origins of major groups of organisms are uniquely evocative, but the concept of 'missing links', which has a powerful grasp on the imagination, has become freighted with unfounded notions of evolutionary 'progress' and with a mistaken emphasis on the single intermediate fossil as the key to understanding evolutionary transitions. Much of the importance of transitional fossils actually lies in how they resemble and differ from their nearest neighbors in the phylogenetic tree.
Publication Name: Nature
Subject: Zoology and wildlife conservation
ISSN: 0028-0836
Year: 2006
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A new Early Carboniferous tetrapod with a melange of crown-group characters
Article Abstract:
Living tetrapods are the phylogenetic end-points of two diverging lineages from the mid/late Palaeozoic era. Such tetrapods are Amphibia and Amniota, and the earliest representatives of both lineages are from the Visean of East Kirkton, Scotland. A new taxon from the locality has been described, which combines characters of each lineage, as well as representing the basal member of a third Palaeozoic family, the baphetids.
Publication Name: Nature
Subject: Zoology and wildlife conservation
ISSN: 0028-0836
Year: 1998
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Who shouldn't be your daddy?
Article Abstract:
The reproductive incompatibility between two different populations of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans is discussed. The findings show that long-term divergence in the self-fertilizing populations can be easily triggered by the process of natural selection.
Publication Name: Nature
Subject: Zoology and wildlife conservation
ISSN: 0028-0836
Year: 2008
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