Blast Your Way to Evolutionary Progress

The cartoony slogan “Evolve or perish” garnered support from a new story about evolution.  Dave Mosher on Live Science shamelessly titled his article “Catastrophic impacts made life flourish,” describing the theory by Birger Schmitz [U of Lund, Sweden] that the Ordovician extinction was caused by a meteor impact.  Out of the wreckage, a plethora of new life emerged, he thinks.  Don’t tell that to students:

“If you push an ecosystem too hard, you’ll destroy it,” he said.  “But for the organisms living on Earth at the time, [the environment] pushed them to adapt and fill new niches.  It’s like at the university: I tell my students all the time that if we don’t push you, you don’t evolve.”

Whoops; too late.  For the equivocation of confusing random mutation and natural selection with purpose-driven, goal-seeking, hopefully-intelligent study, Schmitz easily wins Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week.

Your evolutionary biologists at work.  No further comment necessary.