Could Humans Develop Blowholes by the Year 4000?
An introduction to fractal evolution
In one of my favorite scenes from Waterworld, Kevin Costner’s character is wrestled to the ground while one of his captors pulls aside his right ear to reveal that — gasp — he has gills!
I saw Waterworld when I was 13, and a question has stuck with me ever since: could humans develop something like gills if the Earth was covered in water? In retrospect, this wasn’t idle speculation, as the world has since warmed and sea levels have risen. But even if the Earth didn’t become a full water world, but rather a wet world, one covered in lakes, how would humans adapt?
Consider the Dolphin
First of all, we wouldn’t develop gills. Instead, we’d have blowholes because that is what happened to one of our ancestors who eventually evolved into dolphins. Dolphins evolved from a wolf-like creature 50 million years ago whose nose drifted to the top of its head over the span of 15 million years. That’s right, dolphins have dislocated noses on their heads, and we have the fossil evidence to prove this:
