ME

ME

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Pronghorn evolution : a matter of fact?

The voiceover tells us, matter-of-factly, that the Pronghorn evolved to outrun the now extinct American Cheetah [Yellowstone - BBC2]! How do they know? Surely this is hypothesis rather than fact; isn't it possible that the Cheetah failed to evolve fast enough to be able to catch the "fastest antelope in the world" or to vary its dietary requirement to devour other fauna in the region? Presumably, long before it became extinct, this species of Cheetah had occasionally found something to feed on!

2 comments:

The Oxcliffe Fox said...

We, too, saw this programme. Wasn't the scenery fantastic? The Vixen

Malcolm said...

thanks to my friend - the oxcliffe vixen - for taking time to comment. The scenery was indeed 'fantastic'. Overall I found the series really impressive - in fact thinking of getting the series DVD! I simply got annoyed when speculation/hypotheses was presented as hard fact.