© The Independent, UKThe author said extra-terrestrials that resemble human beings should have evolved on some of the many Earth-like planets that have been discovered.
They are often portrayed on screen as little green men with elongated limbs and saucer-like eyes.
From
E.T to the
X-Files, aliens from outer space have captured our imagination for decades.Yet a new book from a leading evolutionary biologist argues that if they exist and we ever encountered them,
they would look very similar to us.Professor Simon Conway Morris said extra-terrestrials that resemble human beings should have evolved on at least some of the many Earth-like planets that have been discovered by astronomers.
In his new book published on 2 July,
The Runes of Evolution, the University of Cambridge academic builds on the principle of convergent evolution - that different species will independently evolve similar features, with the comparison of the camera eye of an octopus and a human eye a favourite example - and argues it will not just took place on Earth.
"An area of biology which is becoming popular, perhaps too popular, that the possibility evolution is becoming much more predictable than people thought," he told
The Independent. "The book is really trying to persuade the world that evolutionary convergence is completely ubiquitous. Wherever you look you see it.
"The theme is to try and drive the reader, gently of course, into the possibility that the things which we regard as most important, ie cognitive sophistication, large brains, intelligence, tool making, are also convergent. Therefore, in principle, other Earth-like planets should very much end up with the same sort of arrangement."
Professor Conway Morris, a Fellow at St John's College, said it follows that plant and animal life on other planets able to support life would also look similar to Earth's.
Comment: Unfortunately, this type of fraudulent research may be all too common. Dr. Richard Horton, the current editor-in-chief of the Lancet recently published a statement declaring that much of published research is in fact unreliable at best, if not completely false.