[quote=Ringman] A much more likely transition is from tree climbing- jumping from branch to branch- gliding from branch to branch and from tree to tree- flying. All gradual - no big changes all at once.[/i]
Well, the pre eminent paleoanthropologist of all time, Stephan Jay Gould, spent a lifetime examining all the schit you guys keep wiki-ing up, plus thousands of other examples, and he said it was impossible for it to have happened "gradually". So, I guess he was FOS, huh?
The problem is with your understanding of the word "gradually." Gradually on the geological scale of time is different from gradually on the historical scale of time. Same with "sudden," such as the "sudden" appearance of millions of new species at the dawn of the Cambrian period, called the Cambrian Explosion. It's only "sudden" on the geological scale of time. In normal terms, it was amazingly slow and gradual. Your confusion about these terms stems from your not entering the minds of a scientists to understand what they mean by them.
I WISH I could find a YouTube of that thing I saw once many years ago- with the scientist in the Porsche driving 100 mph down a timeline of the Earth, etc.
It was the most effective demonstration I've ever seen for demonstrating the disconnect between "human" time and time on the scale of life on earth.
It's easy to think that say the Egyptians building pyramids, or cavemen in France, or (fill in the blank involving humans) were a long time ago. They were not. They were the merest hint of a blink of an eye ago.
