The point I want to make about methanogens is that they were the losers in the race through a bottleneck, yet nonetheless survived in niche environments. Similarly, on a larger scale, it is rare for the loser to disappear completely, or for the latecomers never to gain at least a precarious foothold. The fact that flight had already evolved among birds did not preclude its later evolution in bats, which became the most numerous mammalian species. The evolution of plants did not lead to the disappearance of algae, or indeed the evolution of vascular plants to the disappearance of mosses. . Nick Lane
Some Similar Quotes
  1. One thing: you have to walk, and create the way by your walking; you will not find a ready-made path. It is not so cheap, to reach to the ultimate realization of truth. You will have to create the path by walking yourself; the path... - Osho

  2. With me, illusions are bound to be shattered. I am here to shatter all illusions. Yes, it will irritate you, it will annoy you - that's my way of functioning and working. I will sabotage you from your very roots! Unless you are totally destroyed... - Osho

  3. Love only grows by sharing. You can only have more for yourself by giving it away to others. - Brian Tracy

  4. The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself. - Carl Sagan

  5. It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life... - Rachel Carson

More Quotes By Nick Lane
  1. The shrimp's protein and ours are not exactly the same, but they're sosimilar that if you turned up in court and tried to convince a judge that yourversion was not a badly concealed plagiarism, you'd be very unlikely to win. In fact, you'd be a...

  2. The story of evolution is more dramatic, more compelling, more intricate than any creation myth. Yet like any creation myth, it is a tale of transformations, of sudden and spectacular changes, eruptions of innovation that transfigured our planet, overwriting past revolutions with new layers of...

  3. We should not be too quick to dismiss our own [ocular] arrangement. As so often in biology, the situation is more complex...we have the advantage that our own light-sensitive cells are embedded directly in their support cells (the retinal pigment epithelium) with an excellent blood...

  4. The myosin in our own skeletal muscles is more closely related to the myosin driving the flight muscles of that irritating housefly buzzing around your head than it is to the myosin in the muscles of your own sphincters

  5. Nothing is more conservative than a bacterium.

Related Topics