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Given The Fact Of Evolution, One Would Expect The Fossils To Document A Gradual Steady Change From Ancestral Forms To The Descendants. But This Is Not What The Paleontologist Finds. Instead, He Or She Finds Gaps In Just About Every Phyletic Series.

-Ernst Mayr

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Given The Fact Of Evolution, One Would

Ernst Mayr

Given The Fact Of Evolution, One Would Expect The Fossils To Document A Gradual Steady Change From Ancestral Forms To The Descendants. But This Is Not What The Paleontologist Finds. Instead, He Or She Finds Gaps In Just About Every Phyletic Series.

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On Earth, Among Millions Of Lineages Or Organisms And Perhaps 50 Billion Speciation Events, Only One Led To High Intelligence ; This Makes Me Believe Its Utter Improbablity.

Evolution, Thus, Is Merely Contingent On Certain Processes Articulated By Darwin: Variation And Selection. No Longer Is A Fixed Object Transformed, As In Transformational Evolution, But An Entirely New Start Is, So To Speak, Made In Every Generation.

Wherever We Look At The Living Biota … Discontinuities Are Overwhelmingly Frequent…the Discontinuities Are Even More Striking In The Fossil Record. New Species Usually Appear In The Fossil Record Suddenly, Not Connected With Their Ancestors By A Series Of Intermediates.

Living In An Entirely Different Physical As Well As Biotic Environment, Such A Population Would Have Unique Opportunities To Enter New Niches And To Select Novel Adaptive Pathways.

Life Is Simply The Reification Of The Process Of Living.

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