Page 99 - The Errors the American National Academy of Sciences

The NAS's Errors on the Subject of the Fossil Record

2. Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise grad-
ually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at
once and "fully formed." 10
In the years that followed, Gould stated in other occasions, too,
that he accepted the stasis observed in the fossil record. In an article in
Natural History magazine in 1988, he wrote:

[W]ell represented species are usually stable throughout their tem-
poral range, or alter so little and in such superficial ways (usually in
size alone), that an extrapolation of observed change into longer pe-
riods of geological time could not possibly yield the extensive mod-
ifications that mark general pathways of evolution in larger groups.
Most of the time, when the evidence is best, nothing much happens
to most species. 11
As can be seen from these words, Gould admits that a great
many species underwent no changes. In another article in the same
magazine, published in 1993, he wrote:

[S]tasis, or nonchange of most fossil species during their lengthy ge-
ological lifespans was tacitly acknowledged by all paleontologists,
but almost never studied explicitly because prevailing theory

A 25-million-year-
old termite fossil in
amber.

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