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A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of such facts. The facts of evolution come from observational evidence of current processes, from imperfections in organisms recording historical common descent, and from transitions in the fossil record. Theories of evolution provide a provisional explanation for these facts. [1]
Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. [1] [2] It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more or less common within a population over successive generations. [3]
The earliest evidence for life on Earth includes: 3.8 billion-year-old biogenic hematite in a banded iron formation of the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt in Canada; [30] graphite in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks in western Greenland; [31] and microbial mat fossils in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone in Western Australia.
Paleontologists have documented numerous transitional forms and have constructed "an astonishingly comprehensive record of the key transitions in animal evolution". [126] Conducting a survey of the paleontological literature, one would find that there is "abundant evidence for how all the major groups of animals are related, much of it in the ...
A key early discovery was that of homeotic genes that regulate development in a wide range of eukaryotes. The field is composed of multiple core evolutionary concepts. One is deep homology , the finding that dissimilar organs such as the eyes of insects , vertebrates and cephalopod molluscs, long thought to have evolved separately, are ...
The basic mechanisms of evolution are applied directly or indirectly to come up with novel designs or solve problems that are difficult to solve otherwise. The research generated in these applied fields, contribute towards progress, especially from work on evolution in computer science and engineering fields such as mechanical engineering. [5]
Biological Evolution: Facts and Theories was a five-day conference held in March 2009 by the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species. The conference was sponsored by the Catholic Church.
Macroevolution addresses the evolution of species and higher taxonomic groups (genera, families, orders, etc) and uses evidence from phylogenetics, [5] the fossil record, [9] and molecular biology to answer how different taxonomic groups exhibit different species diversity and/or morphological disparity.