PHOTOS: Wacky Animal Evolution Stories

Did you know that polar bears evolved from brown bears? Or that chickens are the descendants of tyrannosaurus rex? Did you hear that the nambaroo, the ancestor of the kangaroo, had fangs and moved on four legs?

We here at HuffPost Green love animals, which is why we decided to create a slideshow of unexpected animal evolution stories. As always, we want to hear from you. Tell us about your favorite interesting animal evolutions in the comments.

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Polar Bears Evolved From Brown Bears

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Did you know that polar bears have survived for 200,000 years and that they are the most recent type of bear species? Scientists believe that polar bears evolved from brown bears in Siberia as a result of isolation from a glacier. Fur color, body shape and sharper teeth are some of the evolutionary changes that occurred. Polar bears and grizzly bears are also able to breed, creating the naturally occurring grolar bear.

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Did you know that polar bears have survived for 200,000 years and that they are the most recent type of bear species? Scientists believe that polar bears evolved from brown bears in Siberia as a result of isolation from a glacier. Fur color, body shape and sharper teeth are some of the evolutionary changes that occurred. Polar bears and grizzly bears are also able to breed, creating the naturally occurring grolar bear.

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pretty strange beyond wacky!

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Strange Animal Evolutions

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Comments

[hazbro24]

12:36 PM on 08/14/2010

Lot's of arguing on this thread. But the issue is settled.

Dinosaurs tasted like chicken.

[rjmtx]

12:18 PM on 08/14/2010

I could make all types of strange shared ancestor statements, but don't want to draw a cladogram right now...

[flashblitzen]

12:34 PM on 08/13/2010

I heard that fungi were closer to humans in dna than plants. Is this true?
Also, my Bible doesn't seem to mention stuff before 6000 years ago. Should I keep my kids from going to school and learning all this heresy? I don't want them to end up in the fiery lake burning, you know, for ever and ever. I know God loves us and all but... He is an angry and vengeful God.

[KarlaElisa]

12:06 PM on 08/16/2010

And don't forget, he needs money. Lots and lots of money.

[YouDontWantMeHere]

11:11 AM on 08/13/2010

where's the wacky 1's?

[rambot02]

08:59 AM on 08/13/2010

I totally believe the human/sponge connection. My brother-in-law has been sponging off the family for years.

[rougebaisers]

06:18 AM on 08/13/2010

I wish there were still dinosaurs around. I can think of quite a few humans I'd like them to have for lunch.

[ArtsyJane]

12:35 AM on 08/16/2010

Maybe the chickens will oblige...

[Jacob77030]

05:17 AM on 08/13/2010

Wrong. Modern bird evolved from feathered dinosaurs. The missing link, which is the Archaeopteryx, confirms this phylogentically. Archaeopteryx pre-dates T Rex by 80 to 90 million years. The authors would be well advised to visit the Houston Museum of Natural Science or the British Museum for a thorough exhibit on Archaeopteryx.

[sabelmouse]

07:54 AM on 08/13/2010

wasn't there a theory that t rexes had feathers? i have not paid attention the last decate or so.

[shagedy]

11:42 AM on 08/13/2010

it's still a hypothesis at this point.

[rc666]

08:42 AM on 08/13/2010

THE LIE THAT "ARCHAEOPTERYX IS THE MISSING LINK BETWEEN REPTILES AND BIRDS"
The 150-million-year-old bird fossil known as Archaeopteryx has been portrayed as "the greatest fossil evidence of evolution" since the 19th century. It has been claimed that this fossil possesses certain reptilian features, for which reason it is the "missing link" between reptiles and birds. This claim has been invalidated, however, by recent findings that prove that Archaeopteryx was a perfect flying bird. Moreover, the alleged reptilian ancestors for birds, the theropod dinosaurs, are all younger than Archaeopteryx in terms of their appearance in the fossil record; a fact which evolutionists try to hide.

[shagedy]

09:47 AM on 08/13/2010

The split between sauropoda and theropoda happened in the middle of the Triassic, which didn't even end until 208 million years ago. There is more than one Archaeopteryx fossil, and I'd like to hear this evidence on how it's a perfectly formed modern flying bird. Why doesn't the creator still make them with teeth and tails?

[Jacob77030]

03:05 PM on 08/13/2010

If Archaeopteryx is a bird as you claim then how did it precede it's ancestor T rex. Logic, something the creationists try to hide.

[Dave Cox]

02:05 AM on 08/13/2010

Nothing like an evolution story to bring out the crazies (on both sides).

[Soopamain]

11:47 PM on 08/12/2010

Dear Mother Nature,

Give up the blue prints.

Thanks,

One of your creatures

[Hematite]

11:12 PM on 08/12/2010

For crying out loud, what can't journalists ever get this straight: NO ONE has argued that chickens evolved from T. rex. Competent paleontologists NEVER identify a particular extinct animal as an ancestor of anything. What appears to be true is that birds (including chickens) are descended from a dinosaur that was fairly closely related to T. rex.

[sabelmouse]

07:55 AM on 08/13/2010

it explains why i feel so unconfertable around chickens though. i always sensed danger.they can nip you know.

[rambot02]

08:49 AM on 08/13/2010

The name of the game for HuffPo is to attract as many hits as possible to as many stories as possible. T-rex is simply better box-office than Incisivosaurus, Albertosaurus, Gorgosaurus, Daspletosaurus, Tarbosaurus.

[mamacat]

10:04 PM on 08/12/2010

Since Polar Bears and Brown Bears often interbreed, it is not surprising that a genetic link has been affirmed.

More surprising is the link between the Rhode Island Red and T. Rex. It is a little odd to think of a T. Rex clucking over a clutch of eggs, while its mate welcomes the dawn with a cock-a-doodle-doo.

The link between humans and sponges is no big deal. If one is willing to go back far enough, one can find a link between all multi-cellular lifeforms. What would be more meaningful would be to identify at what point in the Earth's history sponges and humans had a common ancestor.

[davesf]

08:02 PM on 08/12/2010

And it all happened six thousand years ago! It's amazing!

[rc666]

08:05 PM on 08/12/2010

I believe in a Creator, but I'm not Christian. So I'm not limited to that timeframe.

[Neutralino]

11:56 AM on 08/13/2010

You accept competing brands of nonsense?

This reminds me of a local pizza shop that accepts coupons from competitors.

[mamacat]

10:05 PM on 08/12/2010

Wasn't it actually 6,154 years, 3 months, and 7 days ago?

[rc666]

07:44 PM on 08/12/2010

“For some people the theory of evolution or Darwinism has only scientific connotations, with seemingly no direct implication in their daily lives. This is, of course, a common misunderstanding. Far beyond just being an issue within the framework of the biological sciences, the theory of evolution constitutes the underpinning of a deceptive philosophy that has held sway over a large number of people: Materialism.
Materialist philosophy, which accepts only the existence of matter and presupposes man to be 'a heap of matter', asserts that he is no more than an animal, with 'conflict' the sole rule of his existence. Although propagated as a modern philosophy based on science, materialism is in fact an ancient dogma with no scientific basis. Conceived in Ancient Greece, the dogma was rediscovered by the atheistic philosophers of the 18th century. It was then implanted in the 19th century into several science disciplines by thinkers such as Karl Marx, Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud. In other words science was distorted to make room for materialism."

[rc666]

07:48 PM on 08/12/2010

The past two centuries have been a bloody arena of materialism: Ideologies based on materialism (or competing ideologies arguing against materialism, yet sharing its basic tenets) have brought permanent violence, war and chaos to the world. Communism, responsible for the death of 120 million people, is the direct outcome of materialistic philosophy. Fascism, despite pretending to be an alternative to the materialistic world-view, accepted the fundamental materialist concept of progress though conflict and sparked off oppressive regimes, massacres, world wars and genocide.
Besides these two bloody ideologies, individual and social ethics have also been corrupted by materialism.
The deceptive message of materialism, reducing man to an animal whose existence is coincidental and with no responsibility to any being, demolished moral pillars such as love, mercy, self-sacrifice, modesty, honesty and justice. Having been misled by the materialists' motto "life is a struggle", people came to see their lives as nothing more than a clash of interests which led to life according to the law of the jungle.
Traces of this philosophy, which has a lot to answer as regards man-made disasters of the last two centuries, can be found in every ideology that perceives differences among people as a 'reason for conflict'.
Darwinism comes in handy at this point by completing the jigsaw puzzle. It provides the myth that materialism is a scientific idea. That is why, Karl Marx, founder of communism and dialectical materialism, wrote that Darwinism was "the basis in natural history" for his worldview.

[land2341]

08:20 AM on 08/13/2010

Materialism is not Darwin's fault! If anyone person is to blame it is Herbert Spencer. Scientists are not to blame for the insane things people make of the science they are given.

Darwin did not start survival of the fittest. He said survival of the fit. And there is a very distinct difference. He indicated that what survived was what was fit for that particular set of circumstances and that it was not necessarily an improvement. It was Spencer who applied this to humans and used it to justify horrifying social policies. Darwin disagreed with most of this.

If a scientist brings you electricity mankind can use it to light their homes or to electrocute people - that is not the fault of the scientist or of the science.

[Neutralino]

08:24 AM on 08/13/2010

rc666 is expressing a fascinating concept shared by a very large number of people, but I suspect that most outsiders will not be able to understand what he has said.

Perhaps I can help.

In this context, "materialism" is a code word meaning science. If you think Hurricane Katrina was the result of natural weather patterns, you are a materialist. If you think it was sent by God to punish the people of New Orleans for some sin or another, you are a non-materialist.

The implications are simple: rc666 and his buds say that unfounded theories of religious fanatics are just as valid as theories based on research. Further, only evil people insist of making decisions based on facts because fact-based reasoning led to communism, the holocaust, and all other suffering in human history. Darwin, Karl Marx and Adolph Hitler all think exactly alike.

At this point I'm sure many of you are struck by the overwhelming amount of evidence against this "philosophy." Try to avoid thinking about that long enough to consider one more fact:

If you trace the history of rc666's philosophy, you'll discover that it enjoyed an explosive burst in popularity after the repeated failures of efforts to teach creationism instead of evolution. Creationists tried to use evidence to fight evolution until it became clear to the evidence was against them. When evidence failed, they began arguing that evidence is evil.

Isn't history fun?

[Alex Lawl]

07:27 PM on 08/12/2010

This reads like a pamphlet titled "Look What Crazy Evolutionists Believe". Evolution is the description of the profound and palpable connection every organism has to every other, and the prodigious process culminating in all life that exists and has ever existed. Saying crap like 'people are monkeys and cows are whales' is just despicable.

These slides are spurious firstly because all living things share a common ancestor- to suggest otherwise would mean that life would have had to start start from scratch multiple times completely independently (making new trees of life each time). Did you know that cows and whales and humans and t. rexes and dust mites and trees and yeast and e. coli have a common ancestor? YES, ALMOST BY DEFINITION.

Secondly, branches don't ever come together, only apart. That is, organisms do not evolve from things with which they exist contemporaneously. So, for example, birds cannot have evolved from T. Rexes because birds had already been around for 90 million years BEFORE T. Rex showed up. The chicken AND T. Rex evolved from Coelurosaurs, which should be cool enough!

I was expecting things like "The tree kangaroo: New Guinea's lame excuse for a monkey" or "Penguins: your ancestors didn't crawl out of the ancient ocean and learn to conquer the sky so you could give up and waddle back into the damn water!"

[davesf]

08:03 PM on 08/12/2010

And there was only one type of bird, so of course birds which had existed millions of years before T Rex couldn't possibly have evolved into one? You don't actually know very much about how this works, do you?

[davesf]

08:04 PM on 08/12/2010

Hey, i'm apologizing for my comment, I misread your post. I'm sorry for the snark.

[rbenjamin]

06:35 PM on 08/12/2010

Sponge Thogg Hair Pants?