An international team of scientists has discovered the largest absence of evolution ever seen. It is a type of microorganism that lives in the high seas and that seems to have not evolved over more than 2 billion years. Does this discovery clash with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution?
The experts examined the sulfur bacteria in the rocks of the coastal waters of Western Australia, tiny microorganisms that cannot be seen with the naked eye and are 1.8 billion years old. Thanks to the use of the latest technology, they found that the new bacteria – found off the coast of Chile – were exactly the same as modern sulfur bacteria but with the exception that the newly discovered ones were 2.3 billion years old (they go back, therefore, to the Great Oxidation of the Earth).
“ It seems incredible that life has not evolved for more than two billion years – almost half of Earth’s history. Bearing in mind that evolution is a fact, this lack of evolution must be explained ”, says William Schopf, leader of the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Darwin’s writings on evolution focus much more on species that change over time, but then how can science explain a species that lives forever and does not evolve?
” The key to biology is not to evolve, unless it is caused by changes in the physical or biological environment , which is consistent with Darwin,” according to Schopf, who clarifies that this discovery is not incompatible with the evolutionary theories of the English naturalist. that the environment of these microorganisms has not changed one iota in 3,000 years. It is a simple and very stable environment.
“If they were in an environment that changed but these microorganisms had not evolved, it would have shown that our understanding of Darwinian evolution was a serious mistake. Thus, the results provide further scientific proof of Darwin’s work as it fits perfectly with his ideas ”, concludes Schopf.
