Page 145 - Darwinism Refuted

THE INVALIDITY OF

PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM

I n an earlier chapter, we examined how the fossil record clearly

invalidates the hypotheses of the Darwinist theory. We saw that the
different living groups in the fossil record emerged suddenly, and
stayed fixed for millions of years without undergoing any changes.
This great discovery of paleontology shows that living species exist
with no evolutionary processes behind them.
This fact was ignored for many years by paleontologists, who kept
hoping that imaginary "intermediate forms" would one day be found. In
the 1970s, some paleontologists accepted that this was an unfounded hope
and that the "gaps" in the fossil record had to be accepted as a reality.
However, because these paleontologists were unable to relinquish the
theory of evolution, they tried to explain this reality by modifying the
theory. And so was born the "punctuated equilibrium" model of
evolution, which differs from neo-Darwinism in a number of respects.
This model began to be vigorously promoted at the start of the 1970s
by the paleontologists Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University and Niles
Eldredge of the American Museum of Natural History. They summarized
the evidence presented by the fossil record as revealing two basic
characteristics:
1. Stasis
2. Sudden appearance 173

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