Gaps in the fossil record debunks evolution

[whyumadtho]

Large Gaps in the Fossil Record - evolution never happened:

“Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document a gradual steady change from ancestral forms to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead, he or she finds gaps in just about every phyletic series.” (Ernst Mayr-Professor Emeritus, Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, What Evolution Is, 2001, p.14.)

“All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt. Gradualists usually extract themselves from this dilemma by invoking the extreme imperfection of the fossil record.” (Gould, Stephen J. The Panda’s Thumb, 1980, p. 189.)

“What is missing are the many intermediate forms hypothesized by Darwin, and the continual divergence of major lineages into the morphospace between distinct adaptive types.” (Carroll, Robert L., “Towards a new evolutionary synthesis,” in Trends in Evolution and Ecology 15(1):27-32, 2000, p. 27.)

“Given that evolution, according to Darwin, was in a continual state of motion …it followed logically that the fossil record should be rife with examples of transitional forms leading from the less to more evolved. …Instead of filling the gaps in the fossil record with so-called missing links, most paleontologists found themselves facing a situation in which there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational evolutionary intermediates between documented fossil species.” (Schwartz, Jeffrey H., Sudden Origins, 1999, p. 89.)

“He [Darwin] prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search….It has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin’s predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction was wrong.” (Eldridge, Niles, The Myths of Human Evolution, 1984, pp.45-46.)

“There is no need to apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil record. In some ways it has become almost unmanageably rich, and discovery is out-pacing integration…The fossil record nevertheless continues to be composed mainly of gaps.” (George, T. Neville, “Fossils in Evolutionary Perspective,” Science Progress, vol. 48 January 1960, pp. 1-3.)

“Despite the bright promise – that paleontology provides a means of ‘seeing’ evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists the most notorious of which is the presence of ‘gaps’ in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them. The gaps must therefore be a contingent feature of the record.” (Kitts, David B., “Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory,” Evolution, vol. 28, 1974, p. 467.)

About 80% of all known fossils are marine animals, mostly various types of fish. Yet there is no evidence of intermediate forms. “The most common explanation for the total lack of fossil evidence for fish evolution is that few transitional fossils have been preserved. This is an incorrect conclusion because every major fish kind known today has been found in the fossil record, indicating the completeness of the existing known fossil record.” (Bergman, Jerry, “The Search for Evidence Concerning the Origin of Fish,” CRSQ, vol. 47, 2011, p. 291. ) “Absence of the transitional fossils in the gaps between each group of fishes and its ancestor is repeated in standard treatises on vertebrate evolution…. This is one count in the creationists’ charge that can only evoke in unison from the paleontologists a plea of nolo contendere” (Strahler, Arthur, Science and Earth History, 1987, p. 408.).

“It is interesting that all the cases of gradual evolution that we know about from the fossil record seem to involve smooth changes without the appearance of novel structures and functions.” (Wills, C.,Genetic Variability, 1989, p. 94-96.)

“So the creationist prediction of systematic gaps in the fossil record has no value in validating the creationist model, since the evolution theory makes precisely the same prediction.” (Weinberg, S.,Reviews of Thirty-one Creationist Books, 1984, p. 8.)

“We seem to have no choice but to invoke the rapid divergence of populations too small to leave legible fossil records.” (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 99.)

“For over a hundred years paleontologists have recognized the large number of gaps in the fossil record. Creationists make it seem like gaps are a deep, dark secret of paleontology…” (Cracraft, in Awbrey & Thwaites, Evolutionists Confront Creationists”, 1984.)

 

[whyumadtho]

The fossil record flatly fails to substantiate this expectation of finely graded change.” (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 163.)
“Gaps in the fossil record – particularly those parts of it that are most needed for interpreting the course of evolution – are not surprising.” (Stebbins, G. L., Darwin to DNA, Molecules to Humanity, 1982, p. 107.)
“The fossil record itself provided no documentation of continuity – of gradual transition from one animal or plant to another of quite different form.” (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 40.)
“The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.” (Gould, Stephen J., “Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?,” 1982, p. 140.)
“The lack of ancestral or intermediate forms between fossil species is not a bizarre peculiarity of early metazoan history. Gaps are general and prevalent throughout the fossil record.” (Raff R.A, and Kaufman, T.C., Embryos, Genes, and Evolution: The Developmental-Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1991, p. 34.)
“Gaps between higher taxonomic levels are general and large.” (Raff R.A, and Kaufman, T.C., Embryos, Genes, and Evolution: The Developmental-Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1991, p. 35.)
“We have so many gaps in the evolutionary history of life, gaps in such key areas as the origin of the multicellular organisms, the origin of the vertebrates, not to mention the origins of most invertebrate groups.” (McGowan, C., In the Beginning . . . A Scientist Shows Why Creationists are Wrong, 1984, p. 95.)
“If life had evolved into its wondrous profusion of creatures little by little, Dr. Eldredge argues, then one would expect to find fossils of transitional creatures which were a bit like what went before them and a bit like what came after. But no one has yet found any evidence of such transitional creatures. This oddity has been attributed to gaps in the fossil record which gradualists expected to fill when rock strata of the proper age had been found. In the last decade, however, geologists have found rock layers of all divisions of the last 500 million years and no transitional forms were contained in them. If it is not the fossil record which is incomplete then it must be the theory.” (The Guardian Weekly, 26 Nov 1978, vol. 119, no 22, p. 1.)
“People and advertising copywriters tend to see human evolution as a line stretching from apes to man, into which one can fit new-found fossils as easily as links in a chain. Even modern anthropologists fall into this trap . . .[W]e tend to look at those few tips of the bush we know about, connect them with lines, and make them into a linear sequence of ancestors and descendants that never was. But it should now be quite plain that the very idea of the missing link, always shaky, is now completely untenable.” (Gee, Henry, “Face of Yesterday,” The Guardian, Thursday July 11, 2002.)

 

[whyumadtho]

The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition.” (Stanley, Steven M., Macroevolution: Pattern and Process, 1979 p. 39.)

 

[miamited]

Hi whyumadtho,

If, however, we agree with the record of Scripture, then the fossil record is actually a 'steady-state' exemplar.

According to the record of Scripture, the earth and all that is in this realm is only about 6,000 years old and the fossil record that we have was a product of the one time event of the flood. Therefore, it would be only logical that there are no intermediate forms because the cataclysmic event that created the fossils we find was a one time event.

That's what I'm going with, but each is free to choose his or her own explanation.

God bless you.
In Christ, Ted

 

[The Engineer]

I'm not going to address your evidence right now, because there are quite some threads on here that are more deserving of my attention. All I have to say is that it's lazy to quotemine and that your nickname, whyumadtho, screams troll.

 

[HitchSlap]

Carpet quote bombing....

Ruuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnn......................................

 

[rush1169]

I'm sure many would like to dismiss the fact that the fossil record simply doesn't reveal transitional creatures, but it doesn't. To claim otherwise is silly. The scientific prediction to support evolution would state, as Darwin pointed out, that there should be a plethora of transitional species buried in the earth. To date, that prediction is false and there is very little hope of that changing. That's just a fact you either need to work around or pretend doesn't exist.

 

[The Engineer]

I'm sure many would like to dismiss the fact that the fossil record simply doesn't reveal transitional creatures, but it doesn't. To claim otherwise is silly. The scientific prediction to support evolution would state, as Darwin pointed out, that there should be a plethora of transitional species buried in the earth. To date, that prediction is false and there is very little hope of that changing. That's just a fact you either need to work around or pretend doesn't exist.

Not this again!

Every fossil is a transitional creature, unless it was the last creature in an evolutionary line that went extinct. A transitional creature simply is a creature that another creature evolved into and which then evolved into yet another creature.

That's not to say that transitional creatures can't be used as evidence for evolution. Say you've got species A and species B. Evolution predicts A evolved into B. If you found a species C which has traits of both A and B, this would be evidence for evolution, as it would further support the notion that A evolved into B.

You've just proven that you have absolutely no idea how evolution works.

 

[rush1169]

Every fossil is a transitional creature, unless it was the last creature in an evolutionary line that went extinct.

Of course they are. And everything alive today will some day be a transitional fossil. And the prehistoric rabbit fossil that is the same as a modern rabbit is still transitioning. Everything everywhere is a transitional creature unless it went extinct. Woot!

 

[Elendur]

Of course they are. And everything alive today will some day be a transitional fossil. And the prehistoric rabbit fossil that is the same as a modern rabbit is still transitioning. Everything everywhere is a transitional creature unless it went extinct. Woot!

Well, to be blunt, not everything alive will fossilize.

 

[NailsII]

If evolution never happened, then there would be 600 million year old human fossils waiting to be discovered.
If biblical creationism is true, there would only have been one mass extinction (Noah's flood) and so all the fossils found could be categorised as being pre-flood and post flood only.

I'm gonna stick out my neck here, but I don't think these positions are backed up with any evidence, other than an old book which claims its authority comes from the creator of the universe.....

 

[CabVet]

Oh hey, look! A bunch of quotes mined out of context intermixed with blind denial, where did I see this before?

 

[HitchSlap]

I'm sure many would like to dismiss the fact that the fossil record simply doesn't reveal transitional creatures, but it doesn't. To claim otherwise is silly. The scientific prediction to support evolution would state, as Darwin pointed out, that there should be a plethora of transitional species buried in the earth. To date, that prediction is false and there is very little hope of that changing. That's just a fact you either need to work around or pretend doesn't exist.

How many fossils are there?

Have you read "Your Innner Fish"?

 

[sfs]

I'm sure many would like to dismiss the fact that the fossil record simply doesn't reveal transitional creatures, but it doesn't. To claim otherwise is silly. The scientific prediction to support evolution would state, as Darwin pointed out, that there should be a plethora of transitional species buried in the earth. To date, that prediction is false and there is very little hope of that changing. That's just a fact you either need to work around or pretend doesn't exist.

Hint: if you make up a fact, it's not really a fact.

 

[HitchSlap]

Hint: if you make up a fact, it's not really a fact.

Fact.

 

[KimberlyAA]

Gould and Eldredge claimed that the abrupt appearance of species could be explained by the transition occurring quickly, geologically speaking, in small, isolated populations such that the transitional forms would be highly unlikely to be preserved. They claimed that this theory arose out of biology, but there is no empirical biological basis for such speciation events. It seems that the ‘mechanism’ was adopted because it ‘explained’ their observation of the fossils (they are both palaeontologists). Gould gave air to ideas of macromutational change to explain major transitions and fueled perceptions that punctuated equilibrium's rapid speciation was a form of ‘hopeful monsters’ evolution. Gould and Eldredge denied that this is what they meant.

The debate over punctuated equilibrium has given publicity to stasis as a serious problem for evolution (how can you believe in evolution, or change, when the fossils testify to stasis, or lack of change?). The recognition of the reality of abrupt appearance and stasis corroborates what creationists have been saying since Darwin—that the evidence fits special creation combined with the results of a worldwide Flood.

Niles Eldredge (now curator of invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City) and Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University) gave birth to the idea of ‘Punctuated Equilibria’ at a symposium on models in palaeontology in 1970 at the University of Chicago, with a paper being published in 1972. The idea grew out of their recognition of stasis (lack of gradual change) in the fossil record. That is, that species remain remarkably stable throughout their ‘history’, showing little change from when they appear in the fossil record to when they disappear. Eldredge in particular had spent much effort trying to find evidence for gradual evolutionary changes linking trilobite species in Devonian strata in the United States and Canada, without success. For example, the number of lens elements in the eye should have, according to neo-Darwinian theory, changed gradually from one species of trilobite to another. But it did not. There was little variation over long periods of time and ‘species’, seemed to just appear and disappear.

Eldredge and Gould recognized, as palaeontologists, that this pattern, of little change over long periods of time (in the evolutionary interpretation of the record), and lack of evidence for gradual transformation of one species into another, was a general characteristic of the fossil record; it was not peculiar to Devonian trilobites. New species ‘appear’ in strata without indication of gradual change from a different form. The fossil record is characterised by long periods of stasis, or equilibrium, where species are clearly identifiable and stable, punctuated on occasions by the sudden, or ‘rapid’, appearance of new species. Hence: ‘punctuated equilibria’.

Palaeontologists had generally blamed the gaps in the fossil record (lack of evidence for gradual change and phylogeny) on incompleteness of study, as did Darwin; Eldredge and Gould faced up to the truth that gaps characterised the fossil record. Palaeontologists also ignored stasis as ‘non-data’, as of no interest; Gould and Eldredge recognized ‘stasis is data’.

Gould and Eldredge saw species as discrete entities with an identifiable beginning (at speciation) and end (at extinction), in contrast to the neo-Darwinian concept of species as continually transforming, without a clear identity. Eldredge and Gould spoke of species as ‘individuals’. ‘Speciation’ is for species what mutation is for individuals. Speciation is viewed as random, just as mutations are for individuals. Natural selection operates on the new species to weed out the non-viable ones.

The original paper began with a philosophical treatment of the reluctance of mainstream evolutionists to admit the lack of fossil evidence for gradualism. That is, the preeminence of theory over ‘facts’. Eldredge and Gould recognized, like other commentators on the scientific method, that facts only ‘speak’ when theory accommodates them; otherwise they are explained away. They claimed they were proposing a new theory which would allow the facts of stasis and abrupt appearance in the fossil record to be accommodated in an evolutionary (that is, naturalistic) framework. Previously, stasis had been ignored and the gaps were explained as due to incomplete knowledge.

At one level punctuated equilibrium (PE) is merely a description of the fossil record (assuming geologic time, of course). At another level, it is a process of evolution which Eldredge and Gould claimed could account for the pattern in the fossil record. They claimed that major changes occurred in small, isolated populations removed from the major population (allopatric speciation via peripheral isolates). Furthermore, they claimed these changes happened rather quickly (geologically speaking). This was the supposed ‘mechanism’ which accounted for the stasis and ‘gappiness’ of the fossil record. They said:

‘Since speciation occurs rapidly in small populations occupying small areas far from the center of ancestral abundance, we will rarely discover the actual event in the fossil record.’

They did not define ‘rapidly’, except to say the changes happened,

‘in a short period of time relative to the total duration of a species’.

The other main proponent of PE has been Steven Stanley, who claimed that:

‘Gradual evolutionary change by natural selection operates so slowly within established species that it cannot account for the major features of evolution’,

thus agreeing that changes which produced new species occurred relatively quickly.

Others had recognized that the fossil record did not show gradual transitions between taxa. For example, in 1940 Richard Goldschmidt argued that transitions must have occurred quickly, in jumps, such that there were no intermediate forms to be fossilised because they never existed. Goldschmidt’s ideas were ridiculed by the establishment of the 1940s and 1950s, because mainstream palaeontologists still believed that the transitional fossils would be found with further study. Furthermore, there was no biological basis for understanding how new species could arise as quickly as Goldschmidt suggested.

The basic ‘mechanism’ of speciation proposed by Eldredge and Gould was borrowed from others. The concept of allopatric (geographic) speciation had been recognized as a mechanism of evolutionary change, albeit in a gradualistic manner. Mayr in particular had elaborated on this. Eldredge acknowledged that allopatric speciation can be traced even to pre-Darwinian biology. Eldredge and Gould made one controversial addition, that:

‘Most evolutionary changes in morphology occur in a short period of time relative to the total duration of a species’

and argued that it was a logical deduction from the peripheral isolate theory of allopatric speciation. Although they acknowledged that:

‘No new theory of evolutionary mechanisms can be generated from paleontological data’,

one suspects that the concept of rapid speciation came from their reading of the fossil record rather than from any new understanding of allopatric speciation. Even this concept of rapid speciation was not really new. Other than Goldschmidt, Soviet workers had proposed in the 1960s that change tends to be concentrated in rapid speciation events and that species remain remarkably stable after becoming established.

Kurt Wise, a palaeontologist, suggested an alternative explanation for the fossil evidence of abrupt appearance of species and stasis that Gould and Eldredge recognized. Gould and Eldredge assume the conventional interpretation of the stratigraphic column as resulting from deposition over a long period of time, such that each layer represents a sample of the earth’s life forms at that time. The fossil record is then a bit like a time-lapse movie of the history of life on earth (albeit with variable time-lapses). Wise pointed out that if most of the stratigraphic record resulted from a single catastrophe, such as the Great Flood and its aftermath, this would account for the pattern of abrupt appearance and stasis in the fossil record. Each species would be sampled in a moment of time by such an event and would thus show stasis. Rare exceptions to stasis, that is, consistent vertical gradients of change, such as increasing size upwards (a common observation called Cope’s Law), could be accounted for by sorting processes. Trends could also reflect original geographic or altitudinal gradients in morphology. Additionally, a vertical gradient in form could possibly result from an actual transition during the catastrophe, but this could only occur in a species resistant to the conditions of the catastrophe and with a generation time substantially, shorter than that of the duration of the catastrophe (a year for the Flood). Wise suggested that exceptions to stasis would be marine organisms with short generation times. The best possible exception to stasis that Wise knew of was a Permian foraminifer, which is a marine organism with a short generation time, consistent with a catastrophic Flood model.


Wise wrote:‘The rarity of exceptions to PE sensu stricto [that is, stasis and abrupt appearance of species] indicates that a model of catastrophic deposition of the earth’s rocks could be invoked as a mechanism to account for the paleontological observation of PE theory.’
In the 1970s, following the publication of the original paper, Gould was quite assertive about the lack of gradualism in the fossil record and the rapidity of the evolutionary ‘spurts’.

In their original 1972 paper, Eldredge and Gould argued that the fossil record is characterised by stasis and gaps, and candidly admitted that this could not be due to incomplete study. Gould in particular made a number of strong statements in the 1970s about the lack of evidence in the fossils for the gradual transformation of one species into another. For example, in 1977 Gould wrote:

‘The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology… . to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.’

In their 1972 paper Eldredge and Gould did not define what they meant by rapid change, or what biological mechanism could be responsible for such change. In a joint paper published in 1977, Gould and Eldredge reiterated their claim of ‘rapid’ speciation saying

‘most evolutionary change … is concentrated in rapid (often geologically instantaneous) events … ’

What does ‘geologically instantaneous’ mean? Gould wrote of speciation occurring over

‘thousands of years at most compared with millions for the duration of most species.’

He also wrote of

‘… a host of alternatives that yield new species rapidly even in ecological time’

Notice that Gould here switches from ‘geological time’ to ‘ecological time’—he is emphasizing the rapidity of change.

Although PE was initially restricted to ‘conventional speciation in sexually reproducing Metazoa’, Gould and Eldredge suggested the concept could be applied with benefit at higher taxa than species, indeed even as a general principle in palaeontology. In this context, Gould and Eldredge wrote of

‘Speciation, the source of macroevolutionary variation … ’

and

‘Smoother intermediates between Baupläne are almost impossible to construct, even in thought experiments … We believe that a coherent, punctuational theory … will be forged … ’

Although PE strictly applies to speciation, Gould and Eldredge recognized that the fossil record fitted the same pattern at higher taxonomic levels.

In a paper published in 1977 titled ‘The Return of Hopeful Monsters’, Gould wrote:

‘All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt.’

 

[HitchSlap]

Now convince me you understand this. ^^^

 

[CabVet]

Now convince me you understand this. ^^^

Not gonna happen, all copy and paste... Check this out:

http://creation.com/punctuated-equilibrium-come-of-age

 

[HitchSlap]

Not gonna happen, all copy and paste... Check this out:

Punctuated equilibrium: come of age?

 

[RickG]

Gould and Eldredge claimed that the abrupt appearance of species could be explained by the transition occurring quickly, geologically speaking, in small, isolated populations such that the transitional forms would be highly unlikely to be preserved. They claimed that this theory arose out of biology, but there is no empirical biological basis for such speciation events. It seems that the ‘mechanism’ was adopted because it ‘explained’ their observation of the fossils (they are both palaeontologists). Gould gave air to ideas of macromutational change to explain major transitions and fueled perceptions that punctuated equilibrium's rapid speciation was a form of ‘hopeful monsters’ evolution. Gould and Eldredge denied that this is what they meant.

The debate over punctuated equilibrium has given publicity to stasis as a serious problem for evolution (how can you believe in evolution, or change, when the fossils testify to stasis, or lack of change?). The recognition of the reality of abrupt appearance and stasis corroborates what creationists have been saying since Darwin—that the evidence fits special creation combined with the results of a worldwide Flood.

Niles Eldredge (now curator of invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City) and Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University) gave birth to the idea of ‘Punctuated Equilibria’ at a symposium on models in palaeontology in 1970 at the University of Chicago, with a paper being published in 1972. The idea grew out of their recognition of stasis (lack of gradual change) in the fossil record. That is, that species remain remarkably stable throughout their ‘history’, showing little change from when they appear in the fossil record to when they disappear. Eldredge in particular had spent much effort trying to find evidence for gradual evolutionary changes linking trilobite species in Devonian strata in the United States and Canada, without success. For example, the number of lens elements in the eye should have, according to neo-Darwinian theory, changed gradually from one species of trilobite to another. But it did not. There was little variation over long periods of time and ‘species’, seemed to just appear and disappear.

Eldredge and Gould recognized, as palaeontologists, that this pattern, of little change over long periods of time (in the evolutionary interpretation of the record), and lack of evidence for gradual transformation of one species into another, was a general characteristic of the fossil record; it was not peculiar to Devonian trilobites. New species ‘appear’ in strata without indication of gradual change from a different form. The fossil record is characterised by long periods of stasis, or equilibrium, where species are clearly identifiable and stable, punctuated on occasions by the sudden, or ‘rapid’, appearance of new species. Hence: ‘punctuated equilibria’.

Palaeontologists had generally blamed the gaps in the fossil record (lack of evidence for gradual change and phylogeny) on incompleteness of study, as did Darwin; Eldredge and Gould faced up to the truth that gaps characterised the fossil record. Palaeontologists also ignored stasis as ‘non-data’, as of no interest; Gould and Eldredge recognized ‘stasis is data’.

Gould and Eldredge saw species as discrete entities with an identifiable beginning (at speciation) and end (at extinction), in contrast to the neo-Darwinian concept of species as continually transforming, without a clear identity. Eldredge and Gould spoke of species as ‘individuals’. ‘Speciation’ is for species what mutation is for individuals. Speciation is viewed as random, just as mutations are for individuals. Natural selection operates on the new species to weed out the non-viable ones.

The original paper began with a philosophical treatment of the reluctance of mainstream evolutionists to admit the lack of fossil evidence for gradualism. That is, the preeminence of theory over ‘facts’. Eldredge and Gould recognized, like other commentators on the scientific method, that facts only ‘speak’ when theory accommodates them; otherwise they are explained away. They claimed they were proposing a new theory which would allow the facts of stasis and abrupt appearance in the fossil record to be accommodated in an evolutionary (that is, naturalistic) framework. Previously, stasis had been ignored and the gaps were explained as due to incomplete knowledge.

At one level punctuated equilibrium (PE) is merely a description of the fossil record (assuming geologic time, of course). At another level, it is a process of evolution which Eldredge and Gould claimed could account for the pattern in the fossil record. They claimed that major changes occurred in small, isolated populations removed from the major population (allopatric speciation via peripheral isolates). Furthermore, they claimed these changes happened rather quickly (geologically speaking). This was the supposed ‘mechanism’ which accounted for the stasis and ‘gappiness’ of the fossil record. They said:

‘Since speciation occurs rapidly in small populations occupying small areas far from the center of ancestral abundance, we will rarely discover the actual event in the fossil record.’

They did not define ‘rapidly’, except to say the changes happened,

‘in a short period of time relative to the total duration of a species’.

The other main proponent of PE has been Steven Stanley, who claimed that:

‘Gradual evolutionary change by natural selection operates so slowly within established species that it cannot account for the major features of evolution’,

thus agreeing that changes which produced new species occurred relatively quickly.

Others had recognized that the fossil record did not show gradual transitions between taxa. For example, in 1940 Richard Goldschmidt argued that transitions must have occurred quickly, in jumps, such that there were no intermediate forms to be fossilised because they never existed. Goldschmidt’s ideas were ridiculed by the establishment of the 1940s and 1950s, because mainstream palaeontologists still believed that the transitional fossils would be found with further study. Furthermore, there was no biological basis for understanding how new species could arise as quickly as Goldschmidt suggested.

The basic ‘mechanism’ of speciation proposed by Eldredge and Gould was borrowed from others. The concept of allopatric (geographic) speciation had been recognized as a mechanism of evolutionary change, albeit in a gradualistic manner. Mayr in particular had elaborated on this. Eldredge acknowledged that allopatric speciation can be traced even to pre-Darwinian biology. Eldredge and Gould made one controversial addition, that:

‘Most evolutionary changes in morphology occur in a short period of time relative to the total duration of a species’

and argued that it was a logical deduction from the peripheral isolate theory of allopatric speciation. Although they acknowledged that:

‘No new theory of evolutionary mechanisms can be generated from paleontological data’,

one suspects that the concept of rapid speciation came from their reading of the fossil record rather than from any new understanding of allopatric speciation. Even this concept of rapid speciation was not really new. Other than Goldschmidt, Soviet workers had proposed in the 1960s that change tends to be concentrated in rapid speciation events and that species remain remarkably stable after becoming established.

Kurt Wise, a palaeontologist, suggested an alternative explanation for the fossil evidence of abrupt appearance of species and stasis that Gould and Eldredge recognized. Gould and Eldredge assume the conventional interpretation of the stratigraphic column as resulting from deposition over a long period of time, such that each layer represents a sample of the earth’s life forms at that time. The fossil record is then a bit like a time-lapse movie of the history of life on earth (albeit with variable time-lapses). Wise pointed out that if most of the stratigraphic record resulted from a single catastrophe, such as the Great Flood and its aftermath, this would account for the pattern of abrupt appearance and stasis in the fossil record. Each species would be sampled in a moment of time by such an event and would thus show stasis. Rare exceptions to stasis, that is, consistent vertical gradients of change, such as increasing size upwards (a common observation called Cope’s Law), could be accounted for by sorting processes. Trends could also reflect original geographic or altitudinal gradients in morphology. Additionally, a vertical gradient in form could possibly result from an actual transition during the catastrophe, but this could only occur in a species resistant to the conditions of the catastrophe and with a generation time substantially, shorter than that of the duration of the catastrophe (a year for the Flood). Wise suggested that exceptions to stasis would be marine organisms with short generation times. The best possible exception to stasis that Wise knew of was a Permian foraminifer, which is a marine organism with a short generation time, consistent with a catastrophic Flood model.


Wise wrote:‘The rarity of exceptions to PE sensu stricto [that is, stasis and abrupt appearance of species] indicates that a model of catastrophic deposition of the earth’s rocks could be invoked as a mechanism to account for the paleontological observation of PE theory.’
In the 1970s, following the publication of the original paper, Gould was quite assertive about the lack of gradualism in the fossil record and the rapidity of the evolutionary ‘spurts’.

In their original 1972 paper, Eldredge and Gould argued that the fossil record is characterised by stasis and gaps, and candidly admitted that this could not be due to incomplete study. Gould in particular made a number of strong statements in the 1970s about the lack of evidence in the fossils for the gradual transformation of one species into another. For example, in 1977 Gould wrote:

‘The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology… . to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.’

In their 1972 paper Eldredge and Gould did not define what they meant by rapid change, or what biological mechanism could be responsible for such change. In a joint paper published in 1977, Gould and Eldredge reiterated their claim of ‘rapid’ speciation saying

‘most evolutionary change … is concentrated in rapid (often geologically instantaneous) events … ’

What does ‘geologically instantaneous’ mean? Gould wrote of speciation occurring over

‘thousands of years at most compared with millions for the duration of most species.’

He also wrote of

‘… a host of alternatives that yield new species rapidly even in ecological time’

Notice that Gould here switches from ‘geological time’ to ‘ecological time’—he is emphasizing the rapidity of change.

Although PE was initially restricted to ‘conventional speciation in sexually reproducing Metazoa’, Gould and Eldredge suggested the concept could be applied with benefit at higher taxa than species, indeed even as a general principle in palaeontology. In this context, Gould and Eldredge wrote of

‘Speciation, the source of macroevolutionary variation … ’

and

‘Smoother intermediates between Baupläne are almost impossible to construct, even in thought experiments … We believe that a coherent, punctuational theory … will be forged … ’

Although PE strictly applies to speciation, Gould and Eldredge recognized that the fossil record fitted the same pattern at higher taxonomic levels.

In a paper published in 1977 titled ‘The Return of Hopeful Monsters’, Gould wrote:

‘All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt.’

Why is it when reading all that wall of C&P text that I get this picture in my mind?