9. If you conducted the analysis portion of Experiment 2, you calculated
the rate at which the percentage of fish with a complete pelvis
decreased in that ancient lake. Do you think the same rate of change
would apply to modern fish populations?
A. Probably not, since the environment has changed so much in the 10
million years since that ancient lake existed.
B. Although we did not measure this directly, it is possible that the same
rate of change observed in the fossil record applies to modern
populations.
C. The fossil record analyzed in Experiment 2 only spans 15,000 years,
so we cannot draw any conclusions to modern populations, which
evolved over a much longer period of time, at least 10,000 years.
D. The rate of evolution of a particular phenotype cannot be calculated
from the fossil record because the fossil record is always fragmentary.