A controversial idea of Darwinism.....

Caution, opinion piece, but hey, thats kinda the point of having a blog in the first place....

First a clarification, I am certainly not a proponent of creationism or even intelligent design, I am firmly on-side with evolution and evolutionary principles, and am happy with large portions of Darwinian theory, to a point, that point being the limitations of the scientific developments and advances that were available to him so I have no issues with the lack of understanding on the mechanisms of evolutionary theory that have been developed subsequently. My contention is with regard to the tree of life proposed by Darwin with an ever expanding branching structure as species change and evolve over time, some branches terminating and dying out, other forking and splitting into different groups and, over time, species. I have an alternative proposition, that the tree of life as described by Darwin is fundamentally wrong in the it is upside down.

This may sound a little odd, but I am convinced that early life on this planet began in a vast number of forms making use of a huge number of different ecological niches. The mechanism of the formation of life is not understood, but in general it is considered that life began in single celled form and remained at that stage for several million years. The Darwinian implication is that this single celled life was of a very limited number of types, but this doesn't make sense to me. The early earth as we understand it was full of small highly variable ecosystems, that tended not to be interlinked so it seems far more likely that life would have developed many times in many different niches giving rise to organisms suited to very different environments. I contend that from this widely varigated start point a much broader range of multicellular organisms arose, and that evolution, rather than being a method of changing species to suit an environment, is in fact a process of refining what works, weeding out the least suitable at each stage and slightly modifying the most successful, typically those who are most heterozygous, therefore the most likely to adapt over time through mutation, the counter position being homozygous being far less prone to genetic variation through interbreeding.

As evidence for this conjecture I look to the history that we have so far discovered for mass extinction events, particularly the "Great dying" during the Permian era when it is estimated that 97% of species were eradicated both on land and in the oceans. It is an interesting idea I feel, and as with so many aspects of the ancient history of life on this planet, one which we have limited evidence for either way, but there is still hope of further evidence being discovered.