Evolutionary scientists like to talk as if they understand everything about life on Earth. We know all life on earth evolved from single-celled microbes, and that each type of animal evolved from a common ancestor too. We understand DNA and what genetic similarities and differences mean. What few things we don’t understand, we soon will. Evolution will explain it to us. Unfortunately, pesky little problems keep popping up to throw the proverbial monkeywrench into the works.
Take the bacteria found at the bottom of Lake Huron near Thunder Bay, on the northeast coast of Michigan. While studying underwater sinkholes, scientists found a type of bacterium most similar to the salt-loving sorts that live near hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean and deep under ice-covered Antarctic lakes—except these bacteria live just 70 feet down in a freshwater lake. The discovery has surprised everyone:
“We’re seeing organisms and biochemical processes we’re not supposed to be seeing in the Great Lakes,” said Bopaiah Biddanda, an aquatic microbial ecologist at the Annis Water Resources Institute at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.
“It’s strange that salt-savoring bacteria from deep in the ocean would be in the lake,” said Eugene Braig, assistant director of the Ohio Sea Grant program.
Quotes from: Mayhood, Kevin. “A Hole in Huron: Newly Discovered Sinkholes Sustain Unusual Bacteria at the Bottom of the Great Lake.” The Columbus Dispatch, 10 March 2009.
Contrary to popular myth, humans have not explored every inch of this planet. Consider a place as popular as the Grand Canyon. A recent documentary on the National Geographic Channel followed an expedition through the canyon. When the expedition’s boat broke down, the team’s botanists explored areas along the banks of the Colorado River. There they found plant species no one had seen before, because no one had bothered to look, in spite of the Grand Canyon’s popularity as a tourist destination.
We don’t know how many bacteria and plants (or animals for that matter) live on our planet, or where they might turn up. Still, you might say, we do know how many people are in the world. Think again. As a 2007 article made clear, we still don’t know how many people live in the world’s backcountry.
The article, in the UK newspaper The Guardian, explained how anthropologists remain largely in the dark about how many isolated tribes live the remote areas of the world—and how many individuals survive in the tribes they do know about. Recent reports of encounters with isolated tribes in Peru have caused anthropologists to take a harder look at how many tribes may live deep in the remotest parts of South America. Just three decades ago, anthropologists thought a dozen tribes lived in isolation; now they think 107 exist in the jungles. How many people make up each tribe? Nobody knows that either. Similar problems have arisen in other parts of the world, where scientists struggle to estimate the number of unknown or little-known tribes living in the woods.
From bacteria to plants to people, life on this planet continues to elude our understanding and surprise us. Only arrogance causes us to think we know everything about not only the life that currently exists on this planet, but also the life thatI once existed— and how it came to be.
Learn more about the troubles with evolution in my new book The Evolution Conspiracy, to be published in September 2009 and available on Amazon.com for pre-ordering now!
References
“Grand Canyon.” National Geographic Channel, 2009.
Janega, James. “Great Lakes Sinkholes a Window to Ancient Life.” Chicago Tribune online, 27 April 2009.
Vidal, John. “‘We said to them, ‘Come closer’ but they said to us, ‘Go further back’: Increasing number of isolated groups being found in world’s last wildernesses.” The Guardian online, 6 October 2007.
Filed under: Darwinism, Evolution / Human Origins | Tagged: diversity of life, Lake Huron microbes, unknown tribes
