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Updated: Jun 16, 2025

Resurrection of Dormant Daphnia magna: Protocol and Applications
Published on: January 19, 2018
Biological evolution is dead in the water of Darwin's warm little pond
Olen R Brown1, David A Hullender2
1Emeritus of Biomedical Sciences, At the University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA.
Abstract:
The origin of life and its evolution are generally taught as occurring by abiogenesis and gene-centric neo-Darwinism. Significant biological evolutionary changes are preserved and given direction (descent with modification) by Darwin's (Spencer's) natural selection by survival of the fittest. Only survival of the fittest (adapted/broadened) is available to provide a 'naturalistic' direction to prefer one outcome/reaction over another for abiogenesis. Thus, assembly of first life must reach some threshold (the first minimal cell) before 'survival of the fittest' (the only naturalistic explanation available) can function as Darwin proposed for biological change. We propose the novel concept that the requirement for co-origination of vitamins with enzymes is a fundamental, but overlooked, problem that survival of the fittest (even broadly redefined beyond Darwin) cannot reasonably overcome. We support this conclusion with probability calculations. We focus on the stage of evolution involving the transition from non-life to the first, minimal living cell. We show that co-origination of required biochemical processes makes the origin of life probabilistically absurdly improbable even when all assumptions are chosen to unreasonably favor evolutionary theories.
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