Are Lizards Observed Evolving Live Birth Evidence for Macroevolution?

• Bergman J.

  Author

The claim that lizards are being observed evolving live birth is stronger in rhetoric than it is in evidence. Direct observation establishes that living squamates display egg laying, live bearing, prolonged egg retention, reduced shells, placental exchange, hybrid phenotypes, and, in one exceptional Saiphos equalis pregnancy, both laid eggs and a live neonate. These facts are important. They do not constitute a witnessed historical transition in which an egg-laying population acquired the complete viviparous condition across generations. The history, direction, timing, and number of proposed origins are reconstructed from present organisms through phylogenetic and population models. The newest whole genome study of Zootoca vivipara makes the evolutionary case more precise while also removing several common overstatements. It supports one origin of viviparity in that species, extensive historical gene flow, a polygenic basis, and the gradual accumulation of regulatory variants across many genomic regions. It does not demonstrate the real time construction of a new organ class, and it reports no coding variants in the key concordant genes while expressly leaving structural variation, gene gain, gene loss, and newly evolved genes unresolved. The evidence therefore rules out a simplistic single switch account, but it also rules out the popular claim that macroevolution has simply been observed. A biblical creation model can affirm selection, mutation, recombination, regulatory change, and diversification within created lineages. Its decisive claim is that these processes operate through an already integrated amniote reproductive architecture. The repeated recruitment of homologous tissues and established networks for endocrine control, tissue remodeling, vascular development, immune modulation, transport, and alternative splicing fits that expectation. Complex skink placentation is the strongest objection and must be treated as a genuine integrated phenotype, not minimized. Even there, the demonstrated mechanism is coordinated modification of homologous membranes, uterine tissues, and standing molecular systems. The observed record is best described as adaptive reconfiguration within squamate reproductive architecture. Calling it direct observation of macroevolution confuses measured present mechanisms with an inferred history and grants the evolutionary narrative more than the data themselves provide.

1. Bergman J.

   Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology at Northwest State College in Archbold OH for over 25 years. He has 9 degrees, including 7 graduate (= ‘post-graduate’ in some non-US systems) degrees. Dr Bergman is a graduate of Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, The University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 800 publications in 12 languages and 20 books and monographs. He has also taught at the Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in the department of experimental pathology, and he also taught 6 years at the University of Toledo, and 7 years at Bowling Green State University.

   Among his books is a monograph on peer evaluation published by the College Student Journal Press, a Fastback on the creation-evolution controversy published by Phi Delta Kappa, a book on vestigial organs with Dr George Howe (‘Vestigial Organs’ are Fully Functional), a book on psychology and religious cults, a book on religious discrimination published by Onesimus Press, and a book on mental health published by Claudius Verlag in München. He has also published a college textbook on evaluation (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co.), and has contributed to dozens of other textbooks. He was also a consultant for over 20 science text books, mostly biology and biochemistry.

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