speed limit for evolution

[Eastoff]

I came across this story, and thought there are many who would be interested in it for whatever their reasons.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/evolution-of-big

At the fastest observed terrestrial rates, going from rabbit- to elephant-sized takes roughly 10 million generations, while the aforementioned mouse- to elephant-sized jump takes 24 million generations. In the oceans, however, body size could change twice as fast, perhaps because water’s support of body weight lessened physiological constraints.

50 days old for a mouse to start breeding while elephants start around 12 years of age. I'll let you do the estimations.

 

[jlprk]

I came upon it here.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblo...ody-size-on-earth-from-mouse-to-elephant.html

My objections:
1) The articles keep saying that "it takes" a certain length of time or generations to evolve. No, "it took" that long, in response to changing environments. Whatever the pace was is not by itself evidence of a "speed limit."

2) They apparently estimated the length of a generation for each species. If there were much science, not estimating, in this, this article would have been preceded by years of news releases about discoveries of each species' generation length. Since there have been no such discoveries, they must have just come up with their own estimates instead of using hard science.

3) Apparently they're talking about how fast evolution changed mammals, not reptiles like dinosaurs. Mammals had a sudden spurt when dinosaurs disappeared. Size changes were caused by a changing environment, not some "speed limit."

4) One of the articles assumes that growth is good and discusses it as if it's equivalent to improvement in evolution.

5) Bad english. You don't say "100 times slower." You say "1/100 as fast."

6) A species can grow much faster than they say. The average Japanese man at the end of WW2 was about 5 foot 2. Eating more meat and less rice, they're several inches taller now.