Elvish Mortality

[Amarie of the Vanyar]

Sorry Elianna, but evolution is evolution, it doesn't matter whether the descendant is smaller or bigger than the ancestor [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] As long as the descendant is better adapted to the new environment, it will survive, irrespective of its size, and therefore it cannot be considered a de-volution [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img]

"Biological evolution ... is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual. The ontogeny of an individual is not considered evolution; individual organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are inheritable via the genetic material from one generation to the next. Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportion of different alleles within a population (such as those determining blood types) to the successive alterations that led from the earliest protoorganism to snails, bees, giraffes, and dandelions.
Douglas J. Futuyma in Evolutionary Biology, Sinauer Associates 1986

You can find this quote and a further explanation on what evolution is in this link: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evol...efinition.html