There are plateaus of development, which have been explored extensively.By Niles Eldredge, for one.
Basically, it is very difficult for us, as presumably (if you accept evolution theory) living at the latest microsecond of evolution, to conceive of the vast time spans involved, and on the other hand the minute changes that appeared and were transmitted or disappeared.
I’ve always seen that as the fundamental problem in understanding evolution.
We have such a short life span and tend to see things in much briefer spurts of time.
If you can imagine a tiny dot, which is a permanent change in a species, among the sands of the sea or the stars in the sky, you can see how it is possible and likely that competitors that were infinitesimally different vanished completely, leaving no fossil record at all for us to see. The fossil records that we have is another tiny dot, in the enormous galaxy of organisms that did or could have produced fossils that we have not found.
The whole thing is a matter of dimensions. Yes, if a man develops a trait that is considered ugly, women are not goin to like him, but that is anthropomophizing man, for lack of a better phrase. It’s viewing evolution through the lens of our own experience and the paltriness of the physical evidence of any particular change.
You can’t pick one trait and say we have no evidence of how it changed. Even Darwin was stumped by the eye.
The only theory with more holes in it than evolution is the gloBULLwarming BS.
Here is where the BS comes in. Look at this graphic. The crossover from Homo Rhodesiensis to Homo Sapien, is it gradual? According to this graphical "gem" all of the Asian and European H. Rhodesiensis died leaving a small group in Africa which MAGICALLY morphed into Homo Sapiens. Do does this morphing happen so quick there is no cross over fossils, we just assume there is for the sake of the theory?