Yes. Detailed, well-preserved fossil finds all over the world but most notable China, from 1980s to present wiped out Gould's argument from ignorance.
So then details with no intermediates proved him wrong??? (And of course Gould did not claim absolutely "no" intermediates)
Of course the argument for evolutionism is usually of the form 'well yes we did have all those problems as of day-before-yesterday but no as of yesterday all the problems are solved somehow"
======================= meanwhile
“Abstract: ‘In each major class of biological objects, the principal types emerge ‘ready-made’, and intermediate grades cannot be identified.’ Ouch, that will be up on ID websites faster than one can bat an eye.
Author's response: Here I do not really understand the concern. I changed "ready-made" to "abruptly", to avoid any ID allusions and added clarifications but, beyond that, there is little I can do because this is an important sentence that accurately and clearly portrays a crucial and, to the very best of my understanding, real feature of evolutionary transitions. Will this be used by the ID camp? Perhaps – if they read that far into the paper. However, I am afraid that, if our goal as evolutionary biologists is to avoid providing any grist for the ID mill, we should simply claim that Darwin, "in principle", solved all the problems of the origin of biological complexity in his eye story, and only minor details remain to be filled in. Actually, I think the position of some ultra-darwinists is pretty close to that. However,
I believe that this is totally counter-productive and such a notion is outright false. And, the ID folks are clever in their own perverse way, they see through such false simplicity and seize on it. I think
we (students of evolution) should openly admit that emergence of new levels of complexity is a complex problem and should try to work out solutions some of which could be distinctly non-orthodox; ID, however, does not happen to be a viable solution to any problem. I think this is my approach here and elsewhere.” (William Martin (University of Duesseldorf), reviewing article, and response by author Eugene v. Koonin, “The Biological Big Bang model for the major transitions in evolution,”
Biology Direct, 2:21 (August 20, 2007).)
"
Major transitions in biological evolution show the same pattern of sudden emergence of diverse forms at a new level of complexity. The relationships between major groups within an emergent new class of biological entities are
hard to decipher and do not seem to fit the tree pattern that, following Darwin’s original proposal, remains the dominant description of biological evolution. (Eugene V. Koonin, “The Biological Big Bang Model for the Major Transitions in Evolution,”
Biology Direct 2 (2007).)
"When we view
Darwinian gradualism on a geological timescale, we may expect to find in the fossil record a long series of intermediate forms connecting phenotypes of ancestral and descendant populations. This predicted pattern is called phyletic gradualism. Darwin recognized that phyletic gradualism is not often revealed by the fossil record.
Studies conducted since Darwin’s time likewise have failed to produce the continuous series of fossils predicted by phyletic gradualism. Is the theory of gradualism therefore refuted? Darwin and others claim that it is not, because the fossil record is too imperfect to preserve transitional series...Others have argued, however, that the abrupt origins and extinctions of species in the fossil record force us to conclude that phyletic gradualism is rare."
"A number of contemporary biologists, however, favor various hypotheses of the punctuated equilibrium theory...They base their hypotheses on fossil records which have large “chains” of missing organisms. Although missing-link fossils are occasionally discovered,
the record does little to support Darwin’s concept of gradual, long-term change...Others opposed to hypotheses of evolution through sudden change argue that because such a tiny percentage of organisms becomes fossilized...
drawing definite conclusions from fossil evidence about evolution through either gradual or sudden change is not warranted." (Hickman, C.P. [Professor Emeritus of Biology at Washington and Lee University in Lexington], L.S. Roberts [Professor Emeritus of Biology at Texas Tech University], and A. Larson. 2000. Animal Diversity. McGraw Hill, NY. 429pp.; (p. 23, 261))
