Bizarre

“Scientists have pinned down the fastest-known evolving animal — a ‘living dinosaur’ called a tuatara. The tuatara, Sphendon punctatus, resembles a lizard and is found only in New Zealand. It is the only surviving member of a reptilian order Sphehodontia that lived alongside early dinosaurs and separated from other reptiles 200 million years ago in the Upper Triassic period.
To make the estimate of evolutionary speed, researchers recovered DNA sequences from the bones of ancient tuatara. The team found that although tuatara have remained largely unchanged physically over very long periods of evolution, they are evolving — at a DNA level — faster than any other animal yet examined.
[“ancient” tuatara???]
[“largely unchanged over very long periods of evolution”?? If they were unchanged it wasn’t evolution was it?]
The tuatara rate is significantly faster than for other animals that have been studied, including the lion, ox, horse and the now-extinct cave bear.
We want to go on and measure the rate of molecular evolution for humans. There are human mummies in the Andes and some very good samples in Siberia where we have some collaborators, so we are hopeful we will be able to measure the rate of human evolution in these animals too.”
[???]

Humans are arguably the most bizarre creatures in the animal kingdom. The proof is in the many gross, unnecessary, contradictory and simply inexplicable things we do. And of course we're different in our capacity to ponder all these oddities and sometimes figure a few out.

[“bizarre”??]
[What is the oldest DNA that is recoverable? “DNA IS a most notoriously unstable molecule” ! ! So how can this bizarre animal decide that there IS evolution going on by looking at “changes” over a few thousand years ? ? ? What a superb piece of writing “Scientists have pinned down the fastest-known evolving animal …” IF you don’t have a leg to stand on but you still want to prove that evolution is a fact ! Once again if this bizarre animal faced capital punishment on this kind of proof how evolutionized would he act ? ?]