SCIENTISTS believe they have proved Charles Darwin was right by setting lizards on different evolutionary paths and watching the results.
Darwin argued in The Origin of Species that when organisms colonise a new territory they adapt to its conditions and eventually evolve into a new species.
The first observable evidence that this happens has come from an experiment in which Anolis lizards were introduced to a group of Bahamian islands.
Returning to the islands 14 years later, the scientists, led by Dr Jonathan Losos from Washington University, Missouri, found that the island lizards had changed to suit the vegetation of their new environment.
They had developed much shorter hind limbs and become lighter to help them perch on the thinner branches and twigs found on the islands. They also had wider toe-pads than lizards living in their natural home on the island of Staniel Cay.
The science journal, Nature, published the results yesterday. It stated: "This may be among the most important work in evolutionary studies since Darwin studied the diversity of finches on the Galapagos Islands during the voyage of the Beagle."
. Some 4,600 defunct satellites and as many other pieces of space debris are turning in a low orbit around the Earth and could do damage to passing spacecraft, Russian scientists have said.
The risk of a crash is small but growing, according to scientists working on an international inhabited space station that will be assembled in orbit by 2002.
For the moment, there is less than one chance out of 50 for the space station, Mir, to collide with an object larger than two centimetres, they said.