托福阅读-30-2-The-Pace-of-Evolutionary-Change.pdf

The Pace of Evolutionary Change A heated debate has enlivened recent studies of evolution. Darwin s original thesis, and the viewpoint supported by evolutionary gradualists, is that species change continuously but slowly and in small increments. Such changes are all but invisible over the short time scale of modern observations, and, it is argued, they are usually obscured by innumerable gaps in the imperfect fossil record. Gradualism, with its stress on the slow pace of change, is a comforting position, repeated over and over again in generations of textbooks. By the early twentieth century, the question about the rate of evolution had been answered in favor of gradualism to most biologists satisfaction. Sometimes a closed question must be reopened as new evidence or new arguments based on old evidence come to light. In 1972 paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge challenged conventional wisdom with an opposing viewpoint, the punctuated equilibrium hypothesis, which posits that species give rise to new species in relatively sudden bursts, without a lengthy transition period. These episodes of rapid evolution are separated by relatively long static spans during which a species may hardly change at all. The punctuated equilibrium hypothesis attempts to explain a curious feature of the fossil record one that has been familiar to paleontologist for more than a century but has usually been ignored. Many species appear to remain unchanged in the fossil record for millions of years a situation that seems to be at odds with Darwin s model of continuous change. Intermediated fossil forms, predicted by gradualism, are typically lacking. In most localities a given spec