What are examples of post-Darwin evidence for evolution?

Answer 1

Good question. Evolution is like, well did you ever throw a piece of trash on the groud? Than if the rest of us did to in that same spot. It changes the earth and trees, flowers, and grass might die. But I think the trick is pictures.

~Amythefairy

Answer 2

Such examples are too numerous to comprehensively list in just a short answer.

Fact is, the evidences Darwin listed are the most basic observations: science back then could provide no more. Since then, science has advanced greatly, and 150 years worth of genetics, molecular Biology, embryology, palaeontology, zoology, population dynamics, and so forth, and so on, have been added to the list of observations supporting Darwin's theory of evolution describing how species originate through inherited reproductive variation and differential reproductive success.

To name just a few examples, however:

- Genetics and genomics in general. The way the genome is encoded, the mechanisms that allow for variation and mutation, are consistent with what would be expected from evolutionary theory. The nested hierarchies we find pervading the genomes of all lifekind match what we would expect from common descent.

- ERV's specifically. ERV's with a more or less random insertion locus that are nevertheless found in the same exact loci across species boundaries support common descent.

- Human chromosome #2. The extra centromere and telomeric regions in human chromosome #2 are exactly what we would expect to find if humans and the other Great Apes shared a common ancestor.

- The GULO gene in apes and guinea pigs. The similarities between the dysfunctional GULO genes in primates, and the differences with the dysfunctional GULO genes in guinea pigs are exactly what we would expect to find if humans shared a more recent common ancestor with apes than with guinea pigs.

- Gill arches in embryos of higher vertebrates. Part of a growing list of atavisms showing homology with deeper layers of the nested hierarchies of life.

- Genes for teeth in birds. As above, these also are exactly what we would expect to find if birds evolved from animals with teeth, ie. earlier dinosaurs.

I'll stop here, because I could go on for years, typing new examples day and night, and not even manage to keep up with new publications coming out every week, in journals on genetics, genomics, palaeontology, embryology and other life sciences.

Answer 3

The breeding of domestic animals proves that, through selecting animals or plants with a given trait and breeding them with other animals or plants with the same trait, you can increase the trait. For example, breeding two dogs with long hair will create offspring with long hair, and over generations of this, the hair will become much longer. Breeding by humans has created the immense variety of Dog Breeds, cat breeds, livestock breeds, and even the many varieties of winter squash. If humans can consciously choose traits and accentuate them in a species, than nature could do the same over a slightly longer timescale by killing off organisms that are not well adapted, leaving more adapted individuals with opportunities to breed.

The appearance of herbicide resistant weeds, insecticide resistant insects, and antibiotic resistant pathogens proves that small organisms with short generational timescales are already adapting to the selective pressures that humans are creating, in a matter of just a few decades.

I don't have a third example of DIRECT evidence for evolution, although there is much more to the theory that makes it even more solid.