: We already knew the Halo 4 Jackals were supposed to be a different
: subspecies. This isn't new news. But anyone with a basic knowledge of
: evolution and comparative anatomy know that that's a BS explanation, and
: we all know that it was simply 343I's art department making artistic
: changes for the sake of change. I already wrote a long post about this
: topic a year ago, but here's the "TL;DR" version.

: The skulls for an Ibiesh Jackal and a common Jackal are so radically
: different that not only can they not possibly be the same species, they
: cannot even be part of the same genus or even part of the same family, and
: at best are only part of the same order, though most likely they share
: only the same class. In any case their most recent common ancestor with
: the common Jackal is likely several tens of millions of years ago, and the
: nearly identical appearance from the neck down would have to be just a
: very, very lucky instance of convergent evolution. Even artificial
: selection couldn't produce skulls of such radical structural differences
: within the lowest taxa. Ibiesh Jackals are, biologically speaking, about
: as closely related to the common Jackal as humans are with dolphins.

: Now, the common Jackal and the Skirmishers are morphologically similar enough
: to where they could potentially be of the same genus or at least of the
: same family, and their most recent common ancestor could be as recent as
: several million years ago, but even they are almost certainly not the same
: species as the common Jackal. They are likely at least as closely related
: to each other as humans and other great apes are to each other, but no
: closer than how close humans were with, say, Homo erectus or Homo
: floresiensis .

I think we're banging our heads against a stone wall here. Brian Reed's answer to the question of "How could a human-made knife possibly pierce a Forerunner combat skin?" was "Why couldn't it?"
And I'm given to understand that the most recent issue clarified that his combat armor simply adapts to enemy attacks, and didn't have time to adapt to a simple piece of hardened steel.

Writing tip: When your technobabble/bullshit plot handwaving is copied directly from Star Trek, it's time to re-evaluate your career as a science fiction writer. Perhaps you should try your hand at straight fantasy, or go plumb toilets for a living.