Original sentence: All contemporary organisms are related to each other through common descent, the products of cumulative evolutionary changes over billions of years.Although there is overwhelming scientific consensus supporting the validity of evolution, it has been at the center of many social and religious controversies since its inception because of its potential implications for the origins of humankind.Evolution is thus the source of the vast diversity of life on Earth, including the many extinct species attested in the fossil record.If those traits are heritable, they are passed to the organisms' offspring, with the result that beneficial heritable traits become more common in the next generation.With its enormous explanatory and predictive power, this theory has become the central organizing principle of modern biology, relating directly to topics such as the origin of antibiotic resistance in bacteria, eusociality in insects, and the staggering biodiversity of Earth's ecosystem
Edited sentence: According to popular evolutionary theory, all contemporary organisms are related to each other through common descent, the products of cumulative evolutionary changes over billions of years.Although there is overwhelming scientific consensus supporting the validity of evolution, it has been at the center of many social and religious controversies from its inception because of its potential implications for the origins of humankind.Evolution is widely believed to be the source of the vast biodiversity on Earth, including the many extinct species attested in the fossil record.If those traits are heritable, they are passed to succeeding generations, with the result that beneficial heritable traits become more common in the next generation.With its explanatory and predictive power, this theory has become the central organizing principle of modern biology, relating directly to topics such as the origin of antibiotic resistance in bacteria, eusociality in insects, and the staggering biodiversity of Earth's ecosystem