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The Human Foot Is An Example Of Macroevolution And Micro-Evolution

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The human foot is an example of micro-evolutionary and macro-evolutionary changes. It has had to adapt to bipedal walking and the stress that is caused by being upright. To identify changes in the human foot; comparative, molecular, and biocultural approaches and their paradigms are used. Therefore, different, and cumulative approaches are needed to make informed hypotheses in biological anthropology. The foot will be shown as an example of approaches commonly used and the resulting perspectives in biological anthropology.

Macroevolution and microevolution use different approaches. Macroevolution looks at the classification of species and subspecies whereas micro-evolution takes on a more reductionist approach. Macro-evolution is a large change over time and focuses more on speciation resulting from separated gene pools. Its focus is between species and their common ancestors rather than within species. Microevolution is essentially part of macroevolution, just on a different time scale. Small evolutionary changes over time make up macroevolution and consists of mutations, changes in gene flow, genetic drift, and selection processes. These processes can result in speciation over a large amount of time.

Figure. 1. This figure shows a family tree based on Linnaeus classification. The split of Homo and Pan is considered macro-evolution because it is on a large time-scale and speciation is happening. Whereas micro-evolutionary changes would occur within the same genus

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