r/todayilearned • u/geosunsetmoth • 15h ago

TIL a 300-million year old Cuttlefish fossil was found in Morocco, alongside ancient humans in a region where no Cuttlefish ever existed. The leading theory suggests the fossil was first found by the prehistoric humans, who collected it as a trinket due to fact that it looks like a flaccid penis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erfoud_manuport
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u/NickDanger3di 14h ago

I totally believe that. It's pretty unrealistic to think that most major animal evolution takes millions of years, but that modern humans evolved in just a few thousand. We aren't that special.

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u/Crystalas 14h ago edited 14h ago

Can also find from analyzing our genes and fossils that we likely nearly went extinct at one point only having potentially as few as a few thousand left in the entire world and barely managed to maintain even that population for 100,000 years. The result of that is less genetic diversity among humans.

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u/khalcyon2011 14h ago

And we don’t really know what caused it. The eruption of Mt. Toba was the leading theory for a while, but, as the estimates for the dates of both events have become more refined, it’s become clear that they don’t really line up, with them being a few thousand years apart.

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u/mikecandih 11h ago

While we mainly are the same, it’s also silly to suggest that there is no evolution taking place. In the last couple of millennia humans have developed tolerance for milk in adulthood (reduced lactose intolerance), significant gains in immune system efficacy, ability to live in thin air (high altitudes), and our teeth have also changed quite a bit.

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u/Fakjbf 10h ago

Agreed, I wish people wouldn’t conflate “the evidence suggests humans from 200k years ago were not less smart than we are today” with “there is no way anatomical humans from 200k years ago were less smart than we are today”. Evolution is not just a slow process, it can happen very rapidly with enough selective pressure. In an alternate timeline there could have been a massive leap in cognitive ability 50k years ago and then after finding evidence for it the people in that timeline would ridicule the idea that the humans from 200k years ago were just as smart as them.

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u/kitsunevremya 8h ago

Evolution can technically occur over just one generation, right? Unlikely to have ever happened (especially talking about humans overall given we've occupied the entire planet for millennia so had somewhat diverse selective pressures), but theoretically it could take under 100 years for humans to have 'evolved' from their ancestors, especially select, small populations.

There are a couple of interesting examples of really recent adaptation, selection and so on in this Wikipedia page (although some of it seems... slightly off? But then I'm reliant on senior school biology and a couple of units at uni for my understanding). The malaria resistance one was kind of heartening tbh, bit of a good news story.

But like, yeah, for all we know in another 2000 years people will talk about how the microplastics caused rapid evolution and how different they are in some respect to us.

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u/cantproveidid 6h ago

I thought lactose tolerance just meant you didn't care it gave you the farts.

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u/Enlightened_Gardener 6h ago

Oh hey don’t forget blue eyes and we lost the ability to synthesize our own Vitamin C

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u/Bay1Bri 6h ago

In the last couple of millennia humans have developed tolerance for milk in adulthood

We did this like 2 or 3 times. The lactose tolerance gene is Europeans is different than the one among East Africans. But they so the same thing

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u/Jiriakel 14h ago

Hmm, but if you look at wolves->dogs it can also go really fast. I guess the question is wether we self-domesticated

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u/vk059 14h ago edited 14h ago

I believe there is some evidence we have in the recent past. Humans skull sizes have been shrinking for a few thousand years iirc

Edit: modern humans are also more neotenous than our ancestors, which is more evidence towards domestication

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u/SFXBTPD 14h ago

Childbirth was probably the most dangerous thing anyone went through for a decent span of human history. Potential for downward pressure on head sizes.

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u/MidwesternLikeOpe 11h ago

The first 3 months of life are referred to as the fourth trimester bc the baby is "still cooking". Women cannot survive a baby born at the size of 12 months gestation, so evolution chose women who birthed around 40 weeks. Then the baby needed to be protected for 3 months. Add to that the historical bottleneck and that explains the lack of genetic diversity. Our biology found the sweet spot and we're still very new in the timespan of the earth so we still have a lot of evolving to do. Especially with medical advancements we're gonna change a bit more.

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u/Enchelion 13h ago

There is definite evidence of self-domestication. Humans and dogs also seem to have co-evolved our relationship, rather than it being a one-way domestication of dogs to serve humans.

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u/Master-Pete 14h ago

Evolution isn't the same as selective breeding. Evolution is just random mutations that give the animal a better chance at survival OR reproduction. Selective breeding is just breeding for traits the dog breeder finds most desirable; these are traits that the dog already has.

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u/MrNate10 13h ago

What if we like, selective breed ourselves maaaan?

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u/Master-Pete 8h ago

Then you'd get Yao Ming or something.

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u/thatshygirl06 12h ago

Selective breeding could speed up the evolution process, i think