I have heard the term quite often, but it seems like science fiction buzzwording since I have no context for it.
What I’m asking for are any verefied examples of the phenomenon. Specifically in Fauna, but I would be interested in flora examples as well. Is this a real thing or is it just a theory or something used to explain the unexplainable?
Most definitely sounds like “convergent evolution”. All it’s saying, zen101, is that there are striking examples of animals that live in the same ecological niche, and have evolved to look similar despite radically different ancestry. As Mangetout says, the Australasian fauna is an especially good example, where there are (or were) marsupial analogues of many Old World species: marsupial wolves, mice, tiger, etc. Others are the mole cricket , which digs underground and has mole-like snout and digging feet. Or there are the swifts, swallows, and martins vs hummingbirds and sunbirds.
I think we actually need to know what the OP means by ‘verified’
All of the above are excellent examples of convergent evolution, where selection of traits by environmental and other factors appears to have shaped two unrelated (or not closely related) organisms similarly, but anyone doubting the validity of evolution itself is going to insist on a different explanation.
There are much closer cases of convergent evolution than those already presented. The gavial and the prehistoric phytosaur looked almost identical. Dolphins and Icthyosaurs look remarkably similar, despite their vastly different ancestries (the most obvious difference being the dolphin’s horizontal tail flukes vs. the icthyosaur vertical tail fin). Octopus eyes and human eyes are strikingly similar, despite a entirely independent lines of descent.
The OP didn’t actually say “verified”. The word used was “Verevied”.
I choose to interpret that as a misspelling of “Viverrid”, i.e., one of the families of Order Carnivora.
In which case, witness the binturong, which is a Viverrid posessing a prehensile tail, almost unique among Carnivores (the kinkajou, which is a Procyonid, also has one).
But various primates and marsupials have prehensile tails.
According to the TV show I was watching the other day – and this seems like a strange thing to invent out of midair or misunderstand plus the show seemd reasonably informed so I put it in the ‘probably mostly true’ category – saber teeth have evolved multiple seperate times in the cat family.
Our own Desmostylus is a classic example – a Tethythere (relative of sea cows, elephants, and hyraxes) who convergently evolved into a pseudo-walrus, complete with (shorter-than-walrus) tusks, and lived on the same diet and apparently in much the same environment.
Note: This does not license Desmo to break into the appropriate line from “Come Together” at any conceivable opportunity and some that aren’t.
Probably a better example than dolphins and sharks would be dolphins and (now extinct) ichthyosaurs. Both are land animals that returned to a fully aqautic existence, evloving into fish-like shapes.
“Parallel evolution” means “the development of similarities in separate but related evolutionary lineages through the operation of similar selective factors on both lines.”
“Convergent evolution” means the “emergence of biological structures or species that exhibit similar function and appearance but that evolved through widely divergent evolutionary pathways.”
The evolution of saber-teeth independently in several different lineages of the cat family (Felidae) mentioned by Quercus could be regarded as parallel evolution.
The evolution of saber-teeth in South American marsupial carnivores mentioned by Desmostylus is an example of convergent evolution.
However, this difference is largely a semantic one. It depends on how close you consider the relationship has to be between lines before you consider it parallell versus convergent.
In any case, there are plenty of verified examples of each.
Sounds like the parallel evolution would then describe the similar markings of different, isolated species of Cichlid (that creationists somehow think proves some point or other of theirs)
South America was an island continent for millions of years until the formation of the panama land bridge. The indigenous mammals evolved in nearly complete isolation from the rest of the world. Despite being unrelated, the south american notungulates evolved in ways strikingly similar to artiodactyls. There were pig-like, horse-like, tapir-like, hippo-like, chalicothere-like, camel-like, and deer-like animals…pretty much any ecological niche was filled with a roughly similar but unrelated organism.
Another typical example of convergent evolution is multiple evolution of ant and termite eating adaptations in widely different lineages. Anteaters, armadillos, pangolins, echidnas, numbats, and aardvarks are all extremely specialized for insect eating, and all have roughly similar body plans…reduced teeth, long snouts, long tongues, large digging claws, closable nostrils.
Among mammals, convergence is extremely common. If you pick a mammal species at random, the odds are good that it has an ecological twin out there that is only distantly related.
I had always heard the term used to describe two strikingly similar or identical specis with no common ancestor.
A fictional example most are familliar with would be nearly all the humanoid races in Star Trek. Many of which can inter-breed (Spock being half Human and half Vulcan) but all of which evolved apart.
Another example would be if we could demonstrate primate evolution on seperate continents with, again, no common ancestor save amino acids or some dissimilar amphibian.
I don’t think I mean convergent evolution. Bats and birds being two different animals using the same solution to fill a niche is interesting, but pragmatically no more so than all different animals that have legs, or eyes, or ears, or mobile necks, or any number of the overwhelmingly similar features of almost every animal on our planet.