ORFans and the Tree of Life

I had the opportunity to attend a lecture by Dr. Paul Nelson Thursday night. His title was, “Whatever Happened to Darwin’s Tree of Life”, and the subject was… Common Descent. According to Nelson many evolutionary biologists reject the idea of a single tree of life, or a single universal common ancestor. He gave much evidence to support his case (which I will not delve into here), and argued that in our lifetime we would see Science shift from a single origin of life event to multiple events. From a ‘tree of life’ to a ‘mangrove of life’. Intelligent Design, he was quick to add, was not going to be an accepted option for some time to come.

I very much enjoyed the lecture, and learned a good bit from it. If you want to hear it, a friend that went with me recorded it, and I think I could manage to get a copy from him.