[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?
Perhaps I was not suficently clear "gradual" and "sudden" depend on the time scale being used. Change in a species has to be gradual because each generation can only be a slightly modified version of the previous generation. If a species stays relatively unchanged for 5,000,000 years and significantly changes over 500,000 years, then on that scale 500,000 years is relatively sudden.
Here is Gould, himself had to say in Punctuated Equilibria, Eldredge & Gould, 1972. From the Statement: (3) The theory of allopatric (or geographic) speciation suggests a different interpretation of paleontological data. If new species arise very rapidly in small, peripherally isolated populations, then the great expectation of insensibly graded fossil sequences is a chimera. A new species does not evolve in the area of its ancestors; it does not arise from the slow transformation of all its forbears. Many breaks in the fossil record are real. (4) The history of life is more adequately represented by a picture of �punctuated equilibria� than by the notion of phyletic gradualism. The history of evolution is not one of stately unfolding, but a story of homeostatic equilibria, disturbed only �rarely� (i.e., rather often in the fullness of time) by rapid and episodic events of speciation. From the final paragraph: The norm for a species or, by extension, a community is stability. Speciation is a rare and difficult event that punctuates a system in homeostatic equilibrium. That so uncommon and event should have produced such a wondrous array of living and fossil forms can only give strength to an old idea: paleontology deals with a phenomenon that belongs to it alone among the evolutionary sciences and that enlightens all its conclusions�time.
Eldredge and Gould were definitely not FOS but their ideas were quite controversial. Gould is a popular target for the common and dishonest practice of "quote mining". If I saw a quote by Gould, or any other prominent scientist, I would not pass it on before looking entire quote to confirm that it was not taken out of context to say something other than what its author meant to say. If you would care to read the whole thing, Punctuated Equilibria is easy to find on the net.
One unerring mark of the love of the truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant. John Locke, 1690
