The Origin of Plants Depended on "Pre-adaptation," Another Word for "Preparation"

One of the most difficult problems for evolutionary biologists to explain is how adaptations manage to appear at the right time for the next stage of evolution to take place. This problem was succinctly summarized by Hugo de Vries, a Dutch botanist. I paraphrase: It's not the survival of the fittest, it's the arrival of the fittest that needs explanation.

To get around the problem, current evolutionary biologists use a word that stands in for this problem: pre-adaptation. In other words, thi...