"Donal" wrote

Scientists agree that Man could not have evolved in the available time
unless there were periods of *intense* development.

That's the first time I heard that and doubt its factuality considering that
a new species of moth evolved in 'Blymie' in less than one human lifetime.
The original species was white matching the bark of a type of tree. A few
'mutants' were varigated but that was a disadvantage (made them more visible
to birds) so few survived to breed.

Come industry, soot from then new factories darkened the bark making white
moths more visible and vulnerable to birds than their varigated brothers and
sisters and the whites disappeared from the region whilst the varigated
thrived and evolved into a new species that cannot breed with their
anticedents any more than we can breed with other mammals. The much-older
white species still exists - just not in industrial England.

It follows that, if a brand new species of insect can evolve in less than a
century then man could easily evolve in millions of years, and I doubt many
'scientists' agree otherwise.

OTOH an Artic expedition experimenting to find the optimum length of their
artificial day discovered that 25 hours was about right. This argued that,
unlike Earthly species, we had evolved elsewhere - probably Mars. It also
explained why it's so hard to get up in the morning (c: