Making this comment because I'm seeing some of these issues crop up in the comments, and in comments from different instances that can't see each other, so rather than reply individually, I'll just make a separate standalone comment.
It bugs me a little whenever people talk about how old a species is. There are different levels to how wrong it is possible to be about this. The worst level is where people think that it's the individuals that are somehow ancient. No. The individuals from those times are as long gone as all the other individuals from that time. Most people don't think that, but it happens. Another level is a bit less wrong, but still is. That the species itself is ancient because it somehow avoided evolution. Nah, it's just retained a lot of characteristics. Theses species still underwent evolution, it's literally unavoidable. It's just that the way they adapted to an ancient environment still works as adaptation to the current (and intervening) environments. They haven't gone through as many drastic visible changes because the way their ancestors lived still works for their modern iterations.
So it is definitely fair to say a species is old, but it's important to realize that that doesn't mean it's literally old in that it hasn't evolved. If they are impressed by species that haven't gone through a lot of apparent changes over the eons, they should check out stromatolites.
Thanks! I legit never thought about it that way having spent all my time in the bit less wrong camp till now.
Yeah, it's a bit unfortunate. However, it's not completely wrong to use the word design, it's almost more a problem of the baggage that the word "design" carries. obviously "intelligent design" as a concept for evolution is bullshit and if you can't separate the concept of "design" from intent then you're still just as wrong. All that said, I think it's fair to talk about species being designed, there is just absolutely zero intent involved anywhere,* with no forethought, or any "thought" at all from the designer. A species is "designed" entirely by the forces of circumstance. The material conditions, if you will, of their environment.
*Just to be fully accurate, there is intent involved when people do selective breeding. Such as with pets or other domesticated animals. But usually that's separated out and not considered evolution, though ironically enough, it actually still is evolution.
ITT: literally an entire post full of people complaining about a strawman made of small semantic nuances that not a single comment has even argued against instead of enjoying the idea that a species has existed largely unchanged for hundreds of millions of years
Lemmy seems to have inherited all the snark of Reddit, with very little of the 'random expert reads post and chimes in with cool anecdote' that Reddit used to have. I miss that.
Its not like ginkos stopped evolving. I'd expect they'd evolve to leverage wind more.
Apparently, they really didn't
The only wild ones left are of a small population in South China and when compared to fossils from Jurassic, it hasn't changed that much.
Although, I admit I dont know how reliable this good news network is, but, it says any variance we see today is due to [human intervention, as we pretty much saved them from extinction.
Looking at the wikipedia page makes me think it has kinda stopped evolving and has not changed much since the fossil age.
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginkgo and more specifically https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginkgo_biloba
It is the last living species in the order Ginkgoales, which first appeared over 290 million years ago, and fossils very similar to the living species, belonging to the genus Ginkgo, extend back to the Middle Jurassic epoch approximately 170 million years ago.
Guess they are the
TrilobitesHorseshoe Crabs of plants: Done with evolution.Edit: mixed that up.
