Slip-eyed flatfish found!

Darkfrog submitted, created time 4 months 3 weeks (www.nature.com)

Although young flatfish have one eye on each side of their heads, the adult flatfish sports both on one side. This allows the fish to lie on the sea floor looking up and still retain its depth perception. This ocular migration has puzzled gradual evolutionists. If the trait evolved gradually over many generations, then why aren't there fossils showing fish with partially migrated eyes?

Well today's Nature posts the discovery of two such fish fossils, blowing a giant raspberry at both creationists and sudden-jump evolutionists alike.

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Evolution and historical continguency caught on tape! E. coli amass traits over time.

Darkfrog submitted, created time 5 months 2 weeks (www.pnas.org)

Historical contingency is a new phrase for me. I gather that it means "the idea that a given new mutation cannot create a new trait unless certain other, related mutations have already taken place." Anyway, it's been observed, repeatedly, in a laboratory setting.

Researchers split some identical E. coli into twelve colonies and gave them a glucose-poor medium that contained citrate, which E. coli cannot ordinarily process. Eventaully, around generation 32,000 some of the E. coli gained the ability to use citrate as food

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Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in the lab

sea-maid submitted, created time 5 months 2 weeks (www.newscientist.com)

A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers' eyes. It's the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.

Ordinarily E. coli cannot process citrate. In fact, this trait is one of the things that researchers use to distinguish E. coli from other species. This team separated E. coli into twelve separate cultures and allowed it to divide. No matter how they replayed things, only extracts from the one citrate-plus culture ever re-developed citrate processing abilities

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