The giraffe is the only living member of its genus (Giraffa),
and there is no evidence that any animal similar to it
ever lived in history. Likewise, there is no fossil evidence
for evolution of the okapi, which is often called a living
fossil because it has ‘survived basically unchanged for
fifteen-million years in the isolated cover of its primitive
environment’.41 A major problem is that, in spite of an abuntous consequence of internally generated variation’.50 The
solution Darwin proposed was that these features need not
have evolved in lock step. That is to say, if the neck elongates
a few inches at a time, then the panoply of necessary
supporting structures also correspondingly evolves in step,
and may give an animal with the slightly longer neck a slight
advantage if, for example, it already had a larger heart.