@Sheril

(it "only" took a few billion years🌎 for "it"🧠 to begin to understand "itself)

at least parts of (eukaryotic) yeast and human genes are "homologous" and functionally similar enough to function in either "host "
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5525645/

@Sheril the only one who looks happy is at the root of the tree.

It's almost as if we're getting something wrong.

@Sheril

@Sheril
Caricature says "Something something transitional fossils."

(All the fossils are transitional forms, except a few tgst are dead ends. We are a transitional forms. Let us try not to be th3 latter.)

@Sheril Through an amazing quirk of the internet this was immediately followed in my feed by the following: https://mastodon.social/@warandpeas/115605787398586972

@Sheril why does it then become scattered. Is it that we have some people who aren't of our kind?

@Sheril
well - "evolution" is not only "branching", but 'doing' something more weird than being a spreading bush - it's re-branching. that's what's maybe missing in this nice illustration?

@Sheril yeah it’s so interesting. One thing I like to learn about is how two very similar organisms came to exist on other sides of the planet

@Sheril Sure there are short linear blips, long curvy differentials... all between the Big Bang/Crunch Singularities.

Without scalar differential equations; there's no you, me, or a bird named bee. Now where are those flowers and trees?..

@Sheril It’s missing sections of crossbreeding. different breeds of monkey were also melded in.and in even earlier splits there were quadrapeds.

@Sheril Down with teleology, I say.

The cladal bush works on a number of scales, but its best message is that context matters, any singular definition in biology is just an artefact made up to group a diverse and varying population into a discussion point.

Also that if you do find a population lacking in diversity and variability, that twig on the bush is not going to last long.

@Sheril
Your right. But who will explain this to Fatboy Slim now?

https://youtu.be/ub747pprmJ8

@Sheril So true. I hate that the march of progress fully implies that humans are the 'best' because of their position.

In reality the evolutionary diagram puts all currently living organisms on the same podium. Modern humans are not the end goal.