Changes

==The giraffe's neck ==

==The giraffe's neck ==

[[Image:Dawkins giraffe 1.png|right|thumb|300px|Dawkin's book "Climbing Mount Improbable" (1996), uses this illustration showing an okapi and a giraffe to demonstrate the alleged evolutionary origins of the giraffe]][[Image:Dawkins giraffe 2.png|right|thumb|800px|In the book "Animals of Our World" (1988), Bertelsmann Lexikothek shows the true relative sizes of man, giraffe and okapi; on the left side is repeated Dawkin's illustration for comparison, but with the true okapi between them, again demonstrating its real relative size.]]

[[Image:Dawkins giraffe 1.png|right|thumb|300px|Richard Dawkins' book "Climbing Mount Improbable" (1996) uses this illustration showing an okapi and a giraffe to demonstrate the alleged evolutionary origins of the giraffe]][[Image:Dawkins giraffe 2.png|right|thumb|800px|In the book "Animals of Our World" (1988), Bertelsmann Lexikothek shows the true relative sizes of man, giraffe and okapi; on the left side is repeated Dawkin's illustration for comparison, but with the true okapi between them, again demonstrating its real relative size.]]

Until recently, there were ''no'' [[fossil]] links that could demonstrate the gradual [[evolution]] of the long-necked giraffe from the short-necked giraffe. But Nikos Solounias of the New York Institute of Technology has described a transitional fossil from the late Miocene and early Pliocene. Its neck was a perfect intermediate between the short-neck ancestors and their long-neck descendants.<ref> http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg19726451.700-evolution-what-missing-link.html Newscientist </ref> Some [[Paleontology|paleontologists]] postulate a "neck elongation macromutation" to explain the origin of the long-necked giraffe. [[Richard Dawkins]] also claims the origin of the long-necked giraffe is due to macromutation. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig points out: "This exception would naturally be fully unnecessary, if the gradual evolution of the long-necked giraffe could really be reconstructed through fossils, especially since he much prefers the gradualist view. Dawkins draws the okapi, in relation to the Giraffa, nearly twice as large as it really is. In this way, the problem of its evolution (the gap between the two forms) appears only half as large. One may well ask if this technique is useful in the search for truth."<ref>Lönnig, Wolf-Ekkehard [http://www.weloennig.de/Giraffe.pdf "The Evolution of the Long-Necked Giraffe – What Do We Really Know?"] (2006)</ref>

Until recently, there were ''no'' [[fossil]] links that could demonstrate the gradual [[evolution]] of the long-necked giraffe from the short-necked giraffe. But Nikos Solounias of the New York Institute of Technology has described a transitional fossil from the late Miocene and early Pliocene. Its neck was a perfect intermediate between the short-neck ancestors and their long-neck descendants.<ref> http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg19726451.700-evolution-what-missing-link.html Newscientist </ref> Some [[Paleontology|paleontologists]] postulate a "neck elongation macromutation" to explain the origin of the long-necked giraffe. [[Richard Dawkins]] also claims the origin of the long-necked giraffe is due to macromutation. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig points out: "This exception would naturally be fully unnecessary, if the gradual evolution of the long-necked giraffe could really be reconstructed through fossils, especially since he much prefers the gradualist view. Dawkins draws the okapi, in relation to the Giraffa, nearly twice as large as it really is. In this way, the problem of its evolution (the gap between the two forms) appears only half as large. One may well ask if this technique is useful in the search for truth."<ref>Lönnig, Wolf-Ekkehard [http://www.weloennig.de/Giraffe.pdf "The Evolution of the Long-Necked Giraffe – What Do We Really Know?"] (2006)</ref>