I’m not disagreeing with you here, but wouldn’t it be fair to say there is a gradient, but it is dynamic and defined by the current environment and what it takes to survive it?
Maybe the goal posta keep moving but we are talking about a very large time scale, so long that, for at least a couple of million years, what could be defined as more or less evolved might seem or be descibed as pretty solid.
Although i suppose its not fair to say more or less evolved and might be more accurate to say more or less well adapted.
The question is more or less adapted to what? An elephant is more adapted than a mouse to the daily activities of an elephant, and vice-versa. An elephant might be more well adapted for our current environment for elephant tasks than, say, a wooly mammoth, but it could just be that the wooly mammoth was actually the more well adapted animal except for being the only megafauna in an area with humans, eventually leading to extinction by hunting. There’s a million and one ways to be adapted to an environment.
I’m not disagreeing with you here, but wouldn’t it be fair to say there is a gradient, but it is dynamic and defined by the current environment and what it takes to survive it?
Maybe the goal posta keep moving but we are talking about a very large time scale, so long that, for at least a couple of million years, what could be defined as more or less evolved might seem or be descibed as pretty solid.
Although i suppose its not fair to say more or less evolved and might be more accurate to say more or less well adapted.
The question is more or less adapted to what? An elephant is more adapted than a mouse to the daily activities of an elephant, and vice-versa. An elephant might be more well adapted for our current environment for elephant tasks than, say, a wooly mammoth, but it could just be that the wooly mammoth was actually the more well adapted animal except for being the only megafauna in an area with humans, eventually leading to extinction by hunting. There’s a million and one ways to be adapted to an environment.