Oh for Pete's sake. If Eldridge's and Gould's claim that most most species experience stasis for most of their existence meshed with Darwin why was it controversial. Why would Eldridge and Gould claim Darwin to be a ""phyletic gradualist?" Why should I accept Douglas Theobald's claim that he wasn't?
It probably looks like I'm been mean . . .
Trust me Vade the only person any lurker will think you are being mean to is yourself.
What web page has the examples?
To return to Douglas Theobald, he's more a polemicist than a scientist despite his degree. Why should I accept his claims?
But here you go:
"To Darwin, therefore, speciation entailed the same expectation as phyletic evolution: a long and insensibly graded chain of intermediate forms.
[a few paragraphs later]
In this Darwinian perspective, paleontology formulated its picture for the origin of new taxa. This picture, though rarely articulated, is familiar to all of us. We refer to it here as 'phyletic gradualism' and identify the following as its tenets:
(1) New species arise by the transformation of an ancestral population into its modified descendants.
(2) The transformation is even and slow.
(3) The transformation involves large numbers, usually the entire ancestral population.
(4) The transformation occurs over all or a large part of the ancestral species' geographic range.
These statements imply several consequences, two of which seem especially important to paleontologists:
(1) Ideally, the fossil record for the origin of a new species should consist of a long sequence of continuous, insensibly graded intermediate forms linking ancestor and descendant.
(2) Morphological breaks in a postulated phyletic sequence are due to imperfections in the geological record." (Eldredge and Gould 1972)
Oh for Pete's sake. If Eldridge's and Gould's claim that most most species experience stasis for most of their existence meshed with Darwin why was it controversial. Why would Eldridge and Gould claim Darwin to be a ""phyletic gradualist?" Why should I accept Douglas Theobald's claim that he wasn't?
Because Darwin's words are there to see. You've linked an on-line version yourself in a vain attempt to twist and shout.
From the Theobald page, which supposedly you've already read:
Contradicts PG tenet #2There he is in all his glory, saying all the things you say he never said. Will that stop you from putting the wrong words in his mouth and claiming Ann Coulter's critics are refuted? Will you finally show some class, never mind sanity and honesty? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!But I must here remark that I do not suppose that the process ever goes on so regularly as is represented in the diagram, though in itself made somewhat irregular, nor that it goes on continuously; it is far more probable that each form remains for long periods unaltered, and then again undergoes modification. (Darwin, Ch. 4, "Natural Selection," pp. 152)
Contradicts PG tenet #2
"It is a more important consideration ... that the period during which each species underwent modification, though long as measured by years, was probably short in comparison with that during which it remained without undergoing any change." (Darwin, Ch. 10, "On the imperfection of the geological record," p. 428)
Contradicts PG tenet #2, #3, and #4
"... natural selection will generally act very slowly, only at long intervals of time, and only on a few of the inhabitants of the same region. I further believe that these slow, intermittent results accord well with what geology tells us of the rate and manner at which the inhabitants of the world have changed." (Darwin, Ch. 4, "Natural Selection," pp. 140-141)
To return to Douglas Theobald, he's more a polemicist than a scientist despite his degree. Why should I accept his claims?
I notice you think Ann Coulter's crap doesn't stink. Theobald's sources are primary literature; his quotes are honest.
And Theobald isn't the answer to the question of where in the materials linked to this discussion are the examples of things clearly shown in the fossil record to have evolved a new form in one small region and migrated elsewhere, showing up as the famous "sudden appearances" of creationist cult literature. No doubt you dont' remember seeing them because you never looked, not only not this time but not any previous time.
For the first time ever in Tribune7's sheltered little life:
Speciation by Punctuated EquilibriumIs There Any Evidence For Punctuated Equilibrium?
Yes. Several examples of this exact scenario are known. For example, there's a marine microfossil, a trilobite, a brachiopod, and some dinosaurs (including a Tyrannosaurus).
The author of the above, the person you need to be attacking for undercutting Ann Coulter long before Ann Coulter wrote, is Don Lindsay, not Doug Theobald. You can console yourself that both first names start with a capital "D." I can't believe that your anti-polemicist filter somehow let Ann through. Are you trying to melt another irony-meter?
Note also that atop that page there's a nice Darwin quote not among those already given from Theobald. It looks like a summary of Punk Eek that could have been written by Gould. (I've linked a very similar description by Gould already, but that's no doubt forgotten at this late date.) By comparision with that page and Theobald's, here is Ann Coulter on what punctuated equilibrium is. The contrast should be fairly striking, not to mention the certainty that both cannot be correct in the text of their assertions.
Instead of gradual change occurring by random mutation and natural selection choosing the most "fit" to survive and reproduce--in other words, "Darwin's theory of evolution"--Gould and Eldredge hypothesized that evolution could also happen really fast and then stop happening at all for 150 million years. Basically, what happens is this: Your parents are slugs and then suddenly--but totally at random--you evolve into a gecko and your brother evolves into a shark and your sister evolves into a polar bear and the guy down the street evolves into a porpoise and so on--and then everybody relaxes by the pool for 150 million years, virtually unchanged.I'll take you through that sentence by sentence since it looks a lot like what you yourself have claimed. The lurker can probably skip this part unless he or she is an idiot.
Instead of gradual change occurring by random mutation and natural selection choosing the most "fit" to survive and reproduce--in other words, "Darwin's theory of evolution"--Gould and Eldredge hypothesized that evolution could also happen really fast and then stop happening at all for 150 million years.
Never mind what a poorly cast and cumbersome sentence that is. (Some of mine on this thread haven't been exactly winners.) There are at least two things wrong with this one sentence as more than adequately documented in the sober materials linked. A contrast has been struck between the operation of Darwinian mechanisms and the occurrence of "sudden appearances" in the fossil record as though no theory containing one can contain the other. Already in this post that idea has once again been discredited. Anyone writing about PE for publication should feel obliged to educate herself better than this. Whether or not Ann should know better, the Discovery Institute crackpots who supposedly vetted her stuff certainly should. Dembski has claimed on his blog that he takes responsibility for all errors in Ann's evolution chapters. He's carrying a heavy load these days.
The same sentence implies that evolution ceases during periods of outward morphological stasis. This too is wrong. The pressurs have become conservative rather than innovative. Even at a local fitness maximum, however, neutral drift continues, which is why molecular clocks still work. Stasis in hard fossil parts doesn't tell you if enzymes are becoming more efficient, camouflage patterns are evolving, or behavioral adaptations are changing. If all we had were fossils, we would never know that lions and tigers had become separate species.
OK, I'm going to renege here and leave the other sentences as an exercise for any student who disregared warnings and followed along thus far. As for you, you're not worth it.