On 29-11-2017 16:19, clipka wrote:
> Am 29.11.2017 um 04:08 schrieb omniverse:
> 
>> Or in other words, the way evolution seems to be mostly finished. You don't see
>> a creature becoming future whales or dolphins anymore. What happened to their
>> land-based counterparts? How could they only be 100% water-borne since they
>> began taking to the ocean, why not half and half, like seals and walruses?
> 
> ... or maybe like hippos?
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whippomorpha
> (Spolier Alert!)
> 
> 
> The most common phenomenon in evolution is that you have some animal
> developing a trait that is of benefit in its natural environment, and
> such traits tend to get passed on until they are prevalent throughout
> the species' population. In such a manner, species may change as a whole
> in response to their environment.
> 
> But now and again you have populations being separated, and one develops
> in another direction than the other (because their natural environments
> differ somewhat, or just because one beneficial mutation arises in one
> population but not the other). As each population undergoes its own
> changes from the original form, they become so different that if they
> ever meet again later they can't (or won't) interbreed anymore, and have
> thus become different species -- each differing from the original
> species in its own way. The original species isn't gone -- it has been
> absorbed into the two new species, each of which is better adapted to
> its respective habitat than the original form.
> 

Exactly! Cladism in action ;-)

-- 
Thomas

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