85. Evolution & the Purple Sock | THUNK
Channel: THUNK
Date: 10/02/2016

A newly-discovered creature called "the purple sock" reveals & confirms some of the inner workings of evolution!

-Links for the Curious-

The article in question, "New deep-sea species of Xenoturbella and the position of Xenacoelomorpha", by Rouse et. al. - http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v530/n7588/full/nature16545.html

Optimization Theory in Evolution, by J. Maynard Smith, 1978 - http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.es.09.110178.000335?journalCode=ecolsys.1

An interesting theory about the development of chlorophyll-based life being preceded by creatures which absorbed *only* green light - http://www.livescience.com/1398-early-earth-purple-study-suggests.html

The Tree of Life web project, a browsable index of taxonomy - http://tolweb.org/tree/

Also, if you don't think it's cool that the theory of evolution predicted that the sun had to be much, much older than the physics of nuclear fission said it must be, preempting the discovery of fusion, you can just get out of my face.