09 Feb '09 16:53>
Originally posted by Andrew HamiltonThe division between deuterostomes and protostomes happened before anything like an eye evolved. Either the same gene evolved twice or it is possible to transfer genes between species. One possible explanation for this which is that horizontal interspecies transfer of DNA happens due to cross species infection by RNA retro-viruses. This kind of thing (genes from one species turning up in another) has been seen before - all it shows is that the traditional Tree of Life is too simpler a model to completely describe evolutionary history.
It has been traditionally thought by evolutionists that eyes between at least some of the main animal groups had evolved independently from each other and more than once.
The bases for this assumption was simply because it is hard to imagine how the eye of, say a fruit fly with its compound eye and, say, the human eye could have a common ancestral ...[text shortened]... able to find a link about this but I have heard of it from somewhere -I don’t remember where).
The hypothesis that the chance that the same gene couldn´t have evolved twice because the chances are a trillion to one was either completely made up on the spot (like 96% of all statistics) or based on one of those back-of-an-envelope calculations where they forget about the birthday paradox.