One Kind becoming THREE KINDS

[gbrooks9 (GeorgeB)]

@Ashwin_s,

I can see that Joshua pretty well shredded the original thread…
“2 posts from column A… 3 posts from column B, etc, etc…”

So here is the ORIGINAL POST I used to debut the idea that there really is no barrier between micro- and macro- Evolution.

Three different “kinds” in Australia have been determined to be unusually closely related… by GENETIC similarities rather than physical ones!

They evolved separately, during the Marsupial Diaspora in Australia, from a single common population of generalized marsupials… and we’re lucky enough that no placental mammals found their way to Australia before the land MASS drifted out into the ocean!

A Blurry Line Between TE and OEC

@AllenWitmerMiller ( & @scd ) Further, genetic analysis of the existing marsupial populations on Australia reveals that three of them are unusually closely related… this research was included in an earlier posting by me. Finding the antarctica fossil inspired further research along genetic lines – but, frankly, now we could throw that single fossil away and rely on the genetic comparisons alone! I paste below the link and a key image from that published report: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ “Tracking Marsupial Evolution Using Archaic Genomic Retroposon Insertions” by Maria A. Nilsson, Gennady Churakov, Mirjam Sommer, Ngoc Van Tran, Anja Zemann, Jürgen Brosius, and Jürgen Schmitz PLoS Biol. 2010 Jul; 8(7): e1000436. Published online 2010 Jul 27. PMCID: PMC2910653 PMID: 20668664 Notice in the image below, the various branches associated only with South Ame…