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Punctuated equilibrium and evolutionary stasis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2016

Thomas J. M. Schopf
Thomas J. M. Schopf*
Affiliation:
Dept. Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637
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Writers as disparate in professional interest as those describing speciation in Drosophila, predicting weather, or supporting creationism have all recently focused on the “sudden” appearance of taxa in the geologic record. In the process, each has cited the punctuated equilibrium argument. Owing to the enormously wide attention which this issue has received since its introduction almost a decade ago, it seems worthwhile to try to place the paleontological and biological evidence in a 1981 perspective. The focus I have chosen is to try to analyze the issue, much as in recent columns in Current Happenings on competitive exclusion, and on larval dispersal and biogeography, in which are put forth alternative explanations for a set of data on a general problem.

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Current Happenings
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Paleobiology , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , Spring 1981 , pp. 156 - 166
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Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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References

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65 Those who believe that the fossil record harbors any support for special creation should take no consolation from any arguments concerning punctuated equilibrium. To do so is to incorrectly understand the issues, only one of which concerns preservation and the fossil record30,34.Google Scholar
Paleontology both benefits and suffers from an almost universal necessity to have its ideas conveyed in words instead of in chemical formulae or mathematics, and therefore it has the appearance of being readily accessible to the general reader who lacks training and experience in this field. This appearance of accessibility is both pleasant (it attracts interest to the field) and disconcerting (statements are wildly taken out of context). Of course one can believe that the fossil record supports creationism, just as one can believe that the earth is flat. But in either case the justification has no scientific basis whatsoever. The distortion of facts is as injurious to the understanding of science in general as it is disrespectful to religion in particular. Religion does not depend upon such distortions to justify its value in our society. Indeed religion can only lose respect in the long run if it is tied in the public mind to notions that are so patently false as the view that the fossil record in any way supports creationism.Google Scholar
It is ironic that the recent anti-evolution publicity should appear during the time that molecular biology and modern medical sciences are providing the most detailed account yet available of the evolutionary history of humans and other animals.Google Scholar
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