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Horseshoe crabs be like
(i.ibb.co)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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Absence of paleontological evidence of change in appearance does not mean evolutionary stagnation
Doesn't it? It doesn't seem obvious either way. Are you an actual paleontologist, or just guessing?
Molecular biologist.
It's mostly a matter of what we don't know. Paleontological evidence certainly shows that horseshoe crabs didn't change much in their appearance. However, we just don't know to what extent other aspects of their biology are as conserved. Therefore, it is just unscientific to say that horseshoe crabs are 'living fossils' or that they didn't evolve for millions of years. They may have, they may not have
Yeah exactly. I’m not a biologist but I am aware that horseshoe crabs are harvested for their blood and its unique properties. How much evolution (in the last 450MY) have they undergone in terms of their immune system and other microbiological processes? We may never know but I think it’s quite a stretch to assume “none!”