[taltman1]

Notice how they cherry-pick among genomes to get their fitted line. A common fallacy is to associate genome size with the "complexity" of an organism. Even assuming that there is a simplistic linear ordering of organismal life (i.e., "lower" and "higher" organisms), a "lower" organism like the poplar tree has more than two times the number of genes as the human genome.

[sageikosa]

You mean to tell me evolution isn't about "progress"? ;-)

[writtles]

But there has to be some characteristic that certain species required many evolutionary "steps" to get to. For example, there were no humans OR poplars one billion years ago nor the possibility yet since their / our ancestors hadn't yet made the scene.

[shawkinaw]

Had the same thought. There are also multiple problems with using the "functional, non-redundant" part of the genome, which presumably means the exons.