"Now scientists have upped the poignancy factor with a genetic description of the end of the race for
mammoths. Their story played out on remote, frigid Wrangel Island, in the Arctic Ocean, where a group of perhaps 300 individuals survived, dwindling to an end as late as 2000 BC. In other words into historic times! They compared the genome of a mammoth from when the population was robust across northern Europe and Siberia, to an individual from 4,300 years ago, close to the last of its kind. The evolution, or devolution, is heartbreaking.
The Abstract from the research article in PLOS Genetics describes a population slowly falling victim to inbreeding...observes that the researchers “found that many genes had accumulated mutations that would have halted synthesis of proteins before they were complete, making the proteins useless.” They mention evolution only once, quoting Hendrik Poinar, an “evolutionary geneticist at McMaster University,” who notes, “This is probably the best evidence I can think of for the rapid genomic decay of island populations.” Well, if this “genomic decay” isn’t “evolution at work,” what is it? When actually observed in the world, as opposed to in the imagination of the Darwinist, this is how evolution tends to be: things fall apart, sometimes with consequences that spell the end of a species, as happened with the mammoths, or occasionally with beneficial results. Or things stay the same, thanks to natural selection weeding out deleterious mutations. Or they vary minimally, or vary a little more dramatically only, in the end, to revert to a mean when given the chance, as Tom Bethell describes in Darwin’s House of Cards." EN&V
Using these previously published mammoth sequences, we identify deletions, retrogenes, and non-functionalizing point mutations. In the Wrangel island mammoth, we identify a greater number of deletions, a larger proportion of deletions affecting gene sequences, a greater number of candidate retrogenes, and an increased number of premature stop codons. This accumulation of detrimental mutations is consistent with genomic meltdown in response to low effective population sizes in the dwindling mammoth population on Wrangel island. In addition, we observe high rates of loss of olfactory receptors and urinary proteins, either because these loci are non-essential or because they were favored by divergent selective pressures in island environments. Finally, at the locus of FOXQ1 we observe two independent loss-of-function mutations, which would confer a satin coat phenotype in this island woolly mammoth.
The Abstract from the research article in PLOS Genetics describes a population slowly falling victim to inbreeding...observes that the researchers “found that many genes had accumulated mutations that would have halted synthesis of proteins before they were complete, making the proteins useless.” They mention evolution only once, quoting Hendrik Poinar, an “evolutionary geneticist at McMaster University,” who notes, “This is probably the best evidence I can think of for the rapid genomic decay of island populations.” Well, if this “genomic decay” isn’t “evolution at work,” what is it? When actually observed in the world, as opposed to in the imagination of the Darwinist, this is how evolution tends to be: things fall apart, sometimes with consequences that spell the end of a species, as happened with the mammoths, or occasionally with beneficial results. Or things stay the same, thanks to natural selection weeding out deleterious mutations. Or they vary minimally, or vary a little more dramatically only, in the end, to revert to a mean when given the chance, as Tom Bethell describes in Darwin’s House of Cards." EN&V
For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
Romans 8:22
