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Stasis stars: Platypus and opossum

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From National Geographic:

Which Animals Have Barely Evolved?

That said, two mammals that have undergone the fewest evolutionary shifts are the platypus and the opossum, says Samantha Hopkins, associate professor of geology at the University of Oregon.

You could say the platypus is a survivor: It’s one of the few living descendants of an ancestor that diverged from all the other mammals about 150 million years ago, Hopkins says.

The platypus has “a number of primitive features,” Ibrahim says, “both from what we know from fossils and from what we can see in their [modern-day] anatomy.” More.

What does “primitive” mean in the context? Maybe we should call it a “durable species”?

Oh, and the opossum,

A 2009 study published in the journal PLOS ONE traces the opossum lineage back to a sister group of marsupials called the peradectids, which lived at the time of dinosaur extinction in the Cretaceous–Paleogene period. The evolutionary split of opossums from other marsupials occurred about 65 million years ago.

One factor in opossus’ survival, specifically, may be that they will eat just about anything.

Actually, stasis is quite common in evolution. See Stasis: Life goes on but evolution does not happen

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Comments
@1 "SO they are trying to say unevolved critters are their good evolution friends and not a problem." They try and accommodate everything Robert.Jack Jones
November 21, 2015
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The question not clearly answered is: how old is the oldest "looks just like a modern platypus/opossum fossil"?bFast
November 17, 2015
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What does “primitive” mean in the context? Maybe we should call it a “durable species”?
I believe the word is being used in this sense.daveS
November 17, 2015
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AMEN for picking up on the primitive claim!! In fact even evolutionists complain about the primitive term. Samantha is a geology professer. Evolution is a biology concept. is it me!! anyways. How do they know it broke 150 m ago. All they score is a presumption that the platypus, like mammals, was changing from a reptile stage and so it ONLY could be that the reptilian bits remaining indicate this long existence in unevolution. Its just a line of reasoning. in fact i don't think there are plat fossils from even their geology depositional claims. Doesn't a hunch in the night occur that there was no evolution and thats why creatures are found alike with creatures in the fossil record. only great extinction, not evolving away, doesn't keep the others around. IN short the most common creatures manage to survive extinctions. not about unevolution at all. I suggest the reason nat geo is doing this issue IS BECAUSE ID/YEC/UD(maybe) hit evolutionism hard on this matter of stasis. SO they are trying to say unevolved critters are their good evolution friends and not a problem. A educated suspicion. Is it possib;e thery read UD and respond this way?! Possible?? .Robert Byers
November 16, 2015
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