Page 82 - The Error of the Evolution of Species

The Error of the Evolution
of Species

raised in the laboratory or in cultures, even though a drop

of sea water or tiny amount of soil contains billions of them.
Even the unbelievable wealth of bacteria species has been
realized only in recent years, with advances made in our
knowledge of genetics.
When the genetic structures of microbes that appear
very similar even under the microscope were examined,
they were found to be actually very different species. In the

words of the Northwestern University microbiologist David
Stahl, two microbes can be "as different from each other as
a grizzly bear from an oak tree." 84
In his book In Search of Nature, Edward O. Wilson sum-
marizes the latest developments regarding these micro-or-
ganisms:

The true black hole of systematics, however, may be bacte-
ria. Although roughly 4,000 species have been formally de-
scribed, recent studies in Norway have indicated the pres-
ence of from 4,000 to 5,000 species, almost all new to sci-
ence, among the 10 billion individual organisms found on
average in each gram of forest soil, and another 4,000 to
5,000 species, different from the first set and also mostly
new, in an average gram of nearby marine sediments. 85

Another expert on the subject, Rita Colwell, former
President of the Maryland University Biotechnology

80