User:Pbarnes/common descent

A group of organisms is said to have common descent if they have a common ancestor. In modern biology, scientist generally accept the theory of universal common descent.

History

In 1790, Immanuel Kant (Königsberg (Kaliningrad) 1724 - 1804), in his Kritik der Urtheilskraft, states that the analogy of animal forms implies a common original type and thus a common parent.

In 1795, Charles Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, hypothesized that all warm-blooded animals were descended from a single "living filament":

"...would it be too bold to imagine, that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE endued with animality...?" (Zoonomia, 1795, section 39, "Generation")

In 1859, Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species was published. The views about common descent expressed therein vary between suggesting that there was a single "first creature" to allowing that there may have been more than one. Here are the relevant quotations from the Conclusion:

"[P]robably all of the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed."

"The whole history of the world, as at present known, ... will hereafter be recognised as a mere fragment of time, compared with the ages which have elapsed since the first creature, the progenitor of innumerable extinct and living descendants, was created."

"When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled."

The famous closing sentence describes the "grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one." The phrase "one form" here seems to hark back to the phrase "some few beings"; in any case, the choice of words is remarkable for its consistency with recent ideas about there having been a single ancestral "genetic pool".

Evidence for Common Descent

See also Evidence for Universal Common Descent and Macroevolution

Artificial Selection

Wild Mustard

Talk about the evolution of wild mustard into the common vegetables broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts...

External links

• The Tree of Life Web Project

• 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: the Scientific Case for Common Descent
• What is the Last Universal Common Ancestor?
• Evolution of the Genetic Code, Book: Excellent description of protein coding in mitochondria, thermophiles, etc.