The missing fossils argument; the Devonian explosion (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, May 12, 2023, 19:00 (356 days ago) @ David Turell

Another huge gap refuting Darwinian gradualism:

https://evolutionnews.org/2023/05/fossil-friday-the-devonian-nekton-revolution/

"Klug et al. (2010) described a previously overlooked radical change in the composition of the marine fauna of the Early Devonian, which they called the Devonian Nekton Revolution. Prior to this abrupt event, the marine ecosystems were dominated by organisms that lived either close to the seafloor (demersal) or passively drifting as plankton. Between 410-400 million years ago, a very sudden and enormous expansion of actively swimming (nektonic) animals occurred in the Devonian era, when groups such as ammonoid cephalopods and jawed fish made their first appearance. Within just 10 million years such active swimmers increased from only 5 percent to about 75 percent of the marine faunal biodiversity (see the chart below).

"The authors commented in a later paper that “this macroecological event corresponds to an explosive trend from planktonic and demersal marine animals toward true nekton as represented by the great diversification of jawed fish and ammonoids, reflecting a selection for swimming capabilities. It coincided with macroevolutionary transformations among various mollusc groups” (Monnet et al. 2011) and “is strongly linked with the rise of predatory jawed vertebrates, which also became more active swimmers in the same interval” (Klug et al. 2017, also see Anderson et al. 2011)".

Comment: as fully note before, species suddenly appear, last a while and then disappear. Nothing like Darwin theory of gradualism.