The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

This is one of my favorite Richard Dawkins books.

This week I found a Show HN from 2018 [1] that showed the positions of the continents over geological time, and you could see the continents slowly drifting away (continental drift) over immense periods of time. Unfathomable periods of time. This has been used to demonstrate the evidence for evolution as the geographical distribution of animals fits what you would expect if evolution was true. That is, since speciation occurs due to physical barriers that prevent interbreeding of same species over a lengthy period of time until their gene pool becomes too far removed that they can no longer crossbreed if they were ever eventually united, you would expect to find unique species of animals on the different continents. And that is what we find to be the case. Australia being the poster boy of strange animals.

The book presents a variety of evidence for evolution, and at the end of it, you're left thinking that those who oppose evolution haven't read enough about what it is they are opposing.

I wrote about the book in my blog last year under the title - 30 things I know.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17690693