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Some evidences of discontinuities in the fossil record:
No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It never seemed to happen. Assiduous collecting up cliff faces yields zigzags, minor oscillations, and the very occasional slight accumulation of change--over millions of years, at a rate too slow to account for all the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history. When we do see the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang, and often with no firm evidence that the fossils did not evolve elsewhere! Evolution cannot forever be going on somewhere else. Yet that's how the fossil record has struck many a forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about evolution.
Eldredge, N., 1995
Reinventing Darwin
Wiley, New York, p. 95
Most families, orders, classes, and phyla appear rather suddenly in the fossil record, often without anatomically intermediate forms smoothly interlinking evolutionarily derived descendant taxa with their presumed ancestors.
Eldredge, N., 1989
Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics: Species, Niches, and Adaptive Peaks
McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, New York, p. 22
The history of most fossil species include two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:
1) Stasis - most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless;
2) Sudden appearance - in any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed'.
Gould, S.J. (1977)
"Evolution's Erratic Pace"
Natural History, vol. 86, May
[T]he absence of fossil evidence for intermediate 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, S.J., 1982
"Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?"
Evolution Now: A Century After Darwin
Maynard Smith, J. (editor)
W. H. Freeman and Co. in association with Nature, p. 140
W]e 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., 1984
In the Beginning... A Scientist Shows Why the Creationists are Wrong
Prometheus Books, p. 95
[G]aps between higher taxonomic levels are general and large.
Raff, R. A. and Kaufman, T. C., 1991
Embryos, Genes, and Evolution: The Developmental-Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change
Indiana University Press, p. 35
L]arge evolutionary innovations are not well understood. None has ever been observed, and we have no idea whether any may be in progress. There is no good fossil record of any.
Wesson, R., 1991
Beyond Natural Selection
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, p. 206
Some evidences of discontinuities in the fossil record:
No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It never seemed to happen. Assiduous collecting up cliff faces yields zigzags, minor oscillations, and the very occasional slight accumulation of change--over millions of years, at a rate too slow to account for all the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history. When we do see the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang, and often with no firm evidence that the fossils did not evolve elsewhere! Evolution cannot forever be going on somewhere else. Yet that's how the fossil record has struck many a forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about evolution.
Eldredge, N., 1995
Reinventing Darwin
Wiley, New York, p. 95
Most families, orders, classes, and phyla appear rather suddenly in the fossil record, often without anatomically intermediate forms smoothly interlinking evolutionarily derived descendant taxa with their presumed ancestors.
Eldredge, N., 1989
Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics: Species, Niches, and Adaptive Peaks
McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, New York, p. 22
The history of most fossil species include two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:
1) Stasis - most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless;
2) Sudden appearance - in any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed'.
Gould, S.J. (1977)
"Evolution's Erratic Pace"
Natural History, vol. 86, May
[T]he absence of fossil evidence for intermediate 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, S.J., 1982
"Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?"
Evolution Now: A Century After Darwin
Maynard Smith, J. (editor)
W. H. Freeman and Co. in association with Nature, p. 140
W]e 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., 1984
In the Beginning... A Scientist Shows Why the Creationists are Wrong
Prometheus Books, p. 95
[G]aps between higher taxonomic levels are general and large.
Raff, R. A. and Kaufman, T. C., 1991
Embryos, Genes, and Evolution: The Developmental-Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change
Indiana University Press, p. 35
L]arge evolutionary innovations are not well understood. None has ever been observed, and we have no idea whether any may be in progress. There is no good fossil record of any.
Wesson, R., 1991
Beyond Natural Selection
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, p. 206