Jan asks:

>The "Mystery Hunters" program (a great program) on the Discover Kids
>channel says that just 10,000 years ago our eye teeth were fangs.  How
>does natural selection cause us to lose something so quickly?  It
>doesn't seem to me that a few thousand years ago someone with small
>fangs would have a survival edge over someone with larger fangs.
>(This could be applied to other things we lost too.)

Unfortunately, what you heard isn't true. It wasn't even true 100,000 years
ago. See, e.g., the human images at:

    http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/11/tech/main558166.shtml

However, if you'd like to see what weaponry we might have had several tens of
millions of years ago, see:

    http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0211/feature4/

There is still a shadow of these teeth in humans. If you look at the images
that comprise the "wallpaper" part of the set of images of the
gelada monkeys,
you'll see a significant sexual dimorphism between males and females in their
canines. A shadow of that sexual dimorphism still exists in humans as well.
Canines are generally a bit longer in human males than they are in females.

Wirt Atmar
---
þ RIMEGate(tm)/RGXPost V1.14 at BBSWORLD * Info{at}bbsworld.com

---
 * RIMEGate(tm)V10.2áÿ* RelayNet(tm) NNTP Gateway * MoonDog BBS
 * RgateImp.MoonDog.BBS at 7/22/03 12:08:43 AM