What are some evolutionary differences between us humans today?

Question

To clear up any confusion, I'll use an example. A museum exhibit I once saw had a screen in which the viewer could move through each generation of a family of dinosaurs and see one of the offspring of each generation. Eventually (after about 3 minutes of scrolling), a running dinosaur sprouted little nubs on its back that later would become wings. After a long time of scrolling, a modern robin-like bird would be shown flying on the screen. That was the history of one family that started with 'great-grandpa dinosaur' and is currently living as birds. My question is, if you were to compare a person from one family to another totally different person today, would there be any differences besides color, height, weight, etc? Would there be any differences in their bodies' structures like the nubs on the dinosaur's back? If there are, is there a high possibility that millions of years from now their descendents will be different species?

Thanks in advance for the answers.

Answer 1

I think the museum exhibit was probably a little over exaggerated. When you compare one generation to the one immediately after it, you won't see any evolutionary differences. If you were to actually scroll through all the generations of dinosaurs looking for changes, you would never notice them; these changes take place over thousands or millions of years.

Consider humans as an example. We evolved from a common ancestor shared with chimps. From a chimp-like ancestor, it took us SEVEN MILLION YEARS to reach our current state. If we take a generation to be, say, 20 years, that would be 350,000 slides.

Evolution takes a long, long time. The only place we can see evolution like you've suggested here is by looking at populations of microorganisms that multiply incredibly quickly - drug-resistant tuberculosis is a good example, since we know that tuberculosis must have developed drug resistance sometime after humans invented the drugs to fight them.

Answer 2

All domestic animals are free from natural evolution but may evolve by forced genetics. Once the group always able to reproduce in all the different forms the evolution is over.  If you could find a social group where the females all reproduce from one male there would be a definite change. The anti-evolution people are saying there has never been one animal that has left one species and become a different species since man has been watching.

Answer 3

I think we can look back and see how humans have adapted do different environments and climates but there is no actual evidence that we evolved from another species.

Answer 4

Resistance to particular illnesses seems to be available to some races and not others (sickle cell anemia for example; a condition that originally mutated to help people fight off malaria in nile river basin cultures).

Answer 5

The "human hobbit" is believed by some to be an example of hothouse evolution. That is, an isolated island group inbreeds and a number of mutations occur. The majority of the results from interbreeding would be negative but enough would survive to keep a population going. Eventually, through natural selection a new species would emerge, adapted to living on an island.

Opposing this explanation is one where a human population adapts to the limited resources by becoming smaller. Less size, better ability to live on limited resources.

In both cases, evolution or adaption, change is random."Nubs" don't grow into wings With birds one explanation is the dinosaurs had feathers to control body temperature. Chasing prey favored those that could get some lift and so on until birds appear. Notice there's no "nubs" a limb has evolved to support flight. Were "nubs" to appear on a humans back and they became wings, you'd have a 6 limb creature, something unlike the rest of the animal life on the plant. Such a human would need huge wings to support themselves, a massive chest for the lungs and flight muscles plus major changes in bone structure. Read "Against the Tide" by John Ringo to get a glimpse of what a flying human would be.