But you know they won’t be:
A new study mapping the evolutionary history of animals indicates that Earth’s first animal–a mysterious creature whose characteristics can only be inferred from fossils and studies of living animals–was probably significantly more complex than previously believed.
Among the study’s surprising findings is that the comb jelly split off from other animals and diverged onto its own evolutionary path before the sponge. This finding challenges the traditional view of the base of the tree of life, which honored the lowly sponge as the earliest diverging animal. “This was a complete shocker,” says Casey Dunn of Brown University. “So shocking that we initially thought something had gone very wrong.”
But even after Dunn’s team checked and rechecked their results and added more data to their study, their results still suggested that the comb jelly, which has tissues and a nervous system, split off from other animals before the tissue-less, nerve-less sponge.
This is the biggest problem with evolutionary biology in the class rooms. The simple tree of life graphs in the books are lies. Even many of the evidences given are lies. Scientists know it did not happen that way, and they learn more about it every day. Just like in this situation. The tree of life is very complicated and messed up. The real nuances of the model cannot be communicated to 5th graders and high schoolers.
A Nice Place 
This reminds me of a time back in the day, when it just so happened that ships didn’t fall off the edge of the map and the entire world was astounded to find out it was actually round.
I was tempted to just say “everything I know is a lie” in all caps with plenty of exclamation, but that temptation soon passed. Because this topic really just solidifies the fact that there are no facts, we guess, and poke and prod to try and find out how things work, write down what sounds reasonable and believable, then twenty, thirty, or even hundreds of years later find out that *gasp* we were wrong again!
Hell, just taking Econ this semester made me realize most of what we’ve done in the past for understanding how our economy works is all theorizing, with plenty of cases to prove us wrong.
However, this isn’t to say there’s nothing good going on here, because we’re still trying to understand things, and can potentially better ourselves through that understanding. Unfortunately, there will always be people who accept their fact or their truth as the only truth, and generally in cases where Einstein’s Theory of Relativity could fit, if not literally, then at least figuratively speaking. Either way, just goes to show Nature’s thought of everything we probably never will.
Speaking purely about science, we don’t have all the facts. What we have are models that produce outcomes. For example, right now in the economy we ran on a model of low interest rates, low taxes, high spending. What once worked doesn’t anymore. There have been many models intended to predict the future, all of which have failed.
Same in evolutionary biology. They find things to prove them wrong all the time. I think much of it has to do with our limited minds attempting to grasp vast constructs beyond us. Of course we’re going to get much of it wrong. Of course we shouldn’t speak with finality when speaking of a positive.
ah, screw it…EVERYTHING I KNOW IS A LIE!!!!