It turns out evolution happens in real time (as if it would happen in any other kind of time). From the Bradenton Herald (I quote the article almost in its entirety, in case any of the Christianists from Minnesota come back for more):

A new study of lizards in the Bahamas shows that the natural selection pressures that drive evolution can flip-flop faster than previously thought--even in months.

Man, that's even faster than the neo-cons flip-flopped on Iraq!

But read on. It's a fascinating experiment:

"Darwin was right about so many things," said Jonathan Losos, a former Washington University biologist who led the study. "In this case he was wrong. He thought that evolution must occur slowly and gradually."

The lizards and their changing leg lengths are yet another case of evolution occurring in real time. From finches that evolve longer beaks in a few years to bacteria that adapt to strange feeding regimens in days, evolution, as a science, has leapt out of musty museums and into the field.

Losos had the perfect Petri dishes: 12 tiny islands in the Bahamas with small populations of insect-eating Anolis sagrei, 6-inch long lizards that normally live on the ground but can adapt to life in trees.

On six of the islands, Losos introduced a predator, a large, curly tailed lizard that can gobble up the lizards. He theorized that at first, the fastest prey would survive as they ran for the trees. Natural selection would reward long legs. Then, as the little lizards adapted to life in trees, nimble twig maneuvers and shorter legs would be rewarded.

At the start of the experiment, the scientists, using dental floss nooses on the ends of 10-foot poles, caught all lizards and carefully measured their hind-limbs. After the first six months, their predictions held up. The average leg length of survivors was 2 percent longer than those that were killed. After a year, leg length was 3 percent shorter. The changes were small in absolute terms but statistically very large, said R. Brian Langerhans, a graduate student with Losos.

But if biologists can get better at predicting evolution, it could have applications for areas in which humans are altering the environment and causing evolutionary pressures themselves, Langerhans said. Stanford University ecologist Stephen Palumbi has estimated a $50 billion "evolution bill" associated with the antibiotic and pesticide resistance that bacteria, weeds and insects have evolved in medicine and agriculture.

Now, about survival pressures and growing spines on the Beltway...

NOTE I found this amazing, wonderful, inspirational story in the Times print edition but oddly, or not, I couldn't find it in the online edition. And oddly, or not, Google News showed that very few newspapers (7, to be exact). When I Googled the news on "miracles," I got 1800 hits. Some of them were about merely metaphorical miracles, of course, but still. Who's under seige in this country? Who controls the public square? Science, or the religious loons? Based on this totally unscientic survey, I think I can guess the answer.