More specifically, what are evolutionary sphinxes?
What is a sphinx?
Posted on April 10, 2008 by seedsaside
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Okay, I fixed the typo, I really didn’t mean sphynx…
Sphinx is a genus of hawkmoths – the fast-flying ones with the narrow wings that hover hummingbird-like in front of flowers.
And “evolutionary sphinxes”? :-)
I guess this might be the birth of yet another “framing the expression” event in evolutionary theory just like the “missing links”, so I keep asking…
PS: BTW, the wikipedia page about sphinxes has an interesting story about the predictions made by Darwin and Wallace about a pollinating sphinx, with regard to the expected size of its proboscis…
[...] and it appears that mosses were qualified by a bryophyte systematicist as early as in 1972 as evolutionary sphinxes. Well, at least we’re not left completely out of touch, since these plantee-evo-mythic beasts [...]
In case you didn’t read the follow up, please read the link in the comment above!