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Tree Of Life. EVOLUTION IN ACTION. Modern Evolution 1. Modern Evolution 2. Modern Evolution 3. Modern Evolution 4. Modern Evolution 5. Modern Evolution 6. Modern Evolution 7. Modern Evolution 8. Ten Recent Advances in Evolution. By Carl Zimmer Posted 10.26.09 NOVA To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Origin of Species, here's a list—by no means exhaustive—of some of the biggest advances in evolutionary biology over the past decade. These advances include not just a better understanding of how this or that group of species first evolved, but insights into the evolutionary process itself. In some cases those insights would have given Darwin himself a pleasant jolt of surprise. Ten significant leaps forward in evolution research in the past decade, as chosen and described by noted science writer Carl Zimmer Enlarge Photo credit: (Earth) © NASA; (text) © WGBH Educational Foundation Darwin envisioned natural selection acting so slowly that its effects would be imperceptible in a human lifetime.
But in the late 1900s, evolutionary biologists began to detect small but significant changes taking place in a handful of species. Complex eyes have evolved in several different lineages of animals.