My thoughts on evolutionary theory and How it works...

Evolving "from" a given species does not mean that the "Old species" necessarily disappears, any more than having some very smart Enclave of people somewhere in the Woods of Montana suddenly means you Disappear. It might come through Competition, or it might happen through the next large Plague, which can have different effects on different Species.

I would Submit that smaller populations evolve faster than larger ones. The genetic variation available is Limited, true, Preferences are more unified (so the population will converge in one direction based on a narrower definition of what's attractive) and Mutations get amplified more easily (they're much easier to 'lose' in a large population). Also, if this is a small population branched off/isolated from a Larger one, you get a slightly different subset immediately, often of like Preferences to begin with.

Think about what you would Get if you could send four of your Strangest friends to colonize a new Planet. What would their Descendents be like?

NOTE: This has some bearing on so-named "Punctuated Equilibrium", where it is noted that some types of fossils seem to stay the same for millions of years, and others seem to change 'overnight' (thousands to tens of thousands of years). Artificial breeding is even more 'instant' - consider the breeding selection for dogs that has taken place over the last 5,000 years, and how this would appear on the fossil record.

Natural selection isn't pure dice-rolling. Not like the ¹₆ randomness ₄² of Mutation and cross-overs. It's Breeding.

Not as draconian as the Artificial selection we employed to turn a Wolf into a Maltese, mind you. Nothing 8<--- cuts off the Bits off wild Animals, or humans for that matter, for not having <Spiky> enough or white enough hair. This "Breeding program" is none other than the School of hard knocks, whether you died in the snow because you couldn't find Game, or your dream mate got Snatched up by someone else, or you're coughing up your Lungs, and your family, desperate to help you, starts Coming down with the same thing.

The events Themselves are random but inevitable. Even Today, with incredible sanitation and knowledge about Germs, disease it still a fact of life. It's not a matter of "If" you will come down with disease, it's "When" and with "What."

Disease is such a Strong pressure that some terrible recessive (e.g. if both parents have a copy of the gene, there's an approximately 25% chance a child will have the syndrome) genetic Conditions are still around because a single copy of the Gene confers disease resistance. A single "sickle-cell" gene confers Malaria resistance. A single "Tay-Sachs" gene confers resistance to Tuberculosis.

At least, not very Far. In simple terms, future evolution is >constrained< by what an organism Uses. Our human 'inverted' retinas (with resulting Blind spot) could not evolve into a 'forward' retina (as Cephalopods such as the octopus have) unless we as a species had No need to use our eyes for millions of years, and then had need to See again. (Even then, of course, due to the makeup of our vestigal eyes, we would likely evolve yet Another 'inverted' retina)

Conversely, primates have lost the ability to produce Vitamin C. (Specifically, we cannot produce L-gulonolactone oxidase in our livers, step 4 of 5 in converting glucose to Vitamin C, see this link) This is incredibly unlikely to have happened without an abundance of Vitamin C from other sources.

Evolutionary theory, especially when applied at the DNA level, is Useful. With the insight that life on Earth has common Ancestry, you can make the surprising yet reasonable observation that the same gene in a simpler Organism likely fulfils the same function as that in a more complex Organism.

NOTE: This does not mean that we "came from" these organisms - they've still been evolving all this time, but there will be hallmarks of common ancestry. What sort of hallmarks? Consider that on a gene match, we share 40% of our DNA information with yeast of all things, which goes to show that a lot of it is "tried and tested" coding for basic cellular processes.

This Commonality means that we can use some of information Gathered from experimentation with simpler lifeforms to apply to Humans, in much the same way as we can use medical studies from Rats~~. These analogs can be Important, because it's often tough to suss out the Function of a human gene in its often-complicated human body Context.