Question

What is the process of Speciation? and how does it support that the Earth is old?

Answer 1

Speciation is when one species becomes another by evolution. I know of two types: allopatric and sympatric speciation and each has a different process.

With allopatric speciation, a type of species is split into 2 groups, say by an earthquake or maybe just continental drift. In each new location the the species has different challenges to adapt to and so evolves differently, eventually to the point that if you were to bring the two groups together they could not interbreed successfully. They have therefore become two separate species.

Sympatric speciation is when two separate species develop in the same location. I'm not really 100% on the process of this but I'd imagine with, say, bacteria which reproduce really quickly this could easily happen with a mutation causing a new species that lives right in the same area as the original species.

I guess this supports the idea that the earth is old because it takes time for speciation to occur and yet we have millions of different species that we know of and we've only discovered a fraction of them (think aquatic species still to be found).

So if there's anything useful to you in all of this go ahead and use it :)

Answer 2

Thanks alot :)!!!