Talk:Evolution

Suggest dividing: Evolution,just explaining the contemporary theory, History of Evolutionary Thought, and Evidence for Evolution.DavidGoodman 23:09, 6 November 2006 (CST)

natural selection

Please be aware of the article Natural selection, which is probably the best done of the articles in this part of the field, even though Eolution seems to be the more logical central one. I do not think it good to start extensive editing in these areas until we straighten out the relationships.DavidGoodman 21:08, 24 November 2006 (CST)

Removed on article cleanup

{{otheruses4|evolution in biology}}

[[Image:Great Image Needed.jpg]]

[[Image:Charles Darwin.jpg|frame|left|[[Charles Darwin]] in 1854, five years before publishing ''[[The Origin of Species]]''.]]

[[Image:Mendel.png|frame|right|[[Gregor Mendel]]'s work on the [[Mendelian inheritance|inheritance]] of traits in pea plants laid the foundation for [[genetics]].]]

[[Image:Skelett vom Wal MK1888 ohne Text.gif|350px|thumb|Letter ''c'' in the picture indicates the undeveloped hind legs of a [[baleen whale]], [[vestigial structure|vestigial]] remnants of its terrestrial ancestors.]]

[[Image:dna-split.png|thumb|right|150px|Mutation occurs because of "copy errors" that occur during DNA replication.]]

[[Image:Peacock.displaying.better.800pix.jpg|thumb|right|250px|A [[peacock]]'s tail is the canonical example of [[sexual selection]]]]

[[Image:Evolution_evi_mig.png|350px|thumb|right|Map of the world showing distribution of [[camelid]]s. Solid black lines indicate possible migration routes.]]

[[Image:Allosaurus1.jpg|right|thumb|200px|An [[Allosaurus]] skeleton.]]

[[Image:Darwin's finches.jpeg|frame|right|The existence of several different, but related, finches on the [[Galápagos Islands]] is evidence of the occurrence of speciation.]]

[[Image:Darwin ape.jpg|left|150px|thumb|A satirical 1871 image of [[Charles Darwin]] as a quadrupedal [[ape]] reflects part of the social controversy over whether humans and other apes share a common lineage.]]

{{evolution}} {{popgen}} {{featured article}}

This is facinating:

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/ Stephen Ewen 21:51, 6 June 2007 (CDT)

What's the meaning of xxxx?

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=345029&cid=21179279 says:

Curious if there was any religious bias in pages, I looked up evolution. There I saw the following odd sentence:

Fossils are xxxx.

Citizendium uses the same history tracking as Wikipedia, so I was able to go back many version to find that this was originally: Fossils are critical evidence for estimating when various lineages originated.

There may be more instances of vandalism to Wikipedia, but I've never seen such a blatant example last through so many edits.

The article is still in bad shape from when it was directly imported from WP. --Robert W King 22:40, 30 October 2007 (CDT)

Agreed. The edit the reader is referring to is this one - made by Nancy Sculerati, who left some time ago. Sculerati wasn't a creationist etc. as far as I know, so it seems to be a placeholder of some description, made as she was ripping out digressions. However, it looks bad. I am going to replace it with the original. John Stephenson 01:18, 6 November 2007 (CST)

Rewrite and New plan needed?

This is such an important article and I do think it needs a global plan and rethink. There are many problems here that follow from the lack of a plan.

A core issue at the outset is to firmly clarify the difference between evolution (the fact of change as witnessed by the fossil record and the molecular evidence) and the mechanism (natural selection). Natural selection has its own aricle so I suggest that this article should focus on the facts and record of evolution, rather than the mechanisms. Those facts relate critically to the speed of change, the pattern of change (uniformitarianism vs catastrophism) and so critically to the dating of change.

The article mistakenly gives the impression that Darwin introduced the idea of evolution, in fact this was not only a very old idea but also one that in general terms was well accepted long before Darwin; conversely, Darwin's innovation (naural selection) was not generally accepted until well after his deathGareth Leng 04:21, 25 January 2008 (CST)