Gradualism in Evolution: present or absent? (Agnosticism)

by David Turell , Tuesday, April 20, 2021, 15:32 (1312 days ago) @ David Turell

Mainly absent. Gunter Bechly in a video:

https://youtu.be/luxbHIF3MAU

It is over an hour long, but one of the many, many examples was the dinosaur explosion:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180416105803.htm

Dinosaurs had originated much earlier, at the beginning of the Triassic Period, some 245 million years ago, but they remained very rare until the shock events in the Carnian 13 million years later.

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First there were no dinosaur tracks, and then there were many. This marks the moment of their explosion, and the rock successions in the Dolomites are well dated. Comparison with rock successions in Argentina and Brazil, here the first extensive skeletons of dinosaurs occur, show the explosion happened at the same time there as well.

Lead author Dr Massimo Bernardi, Curator at MUSE and Research associate at Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, said: "We were excited to see that the footprints and skeletons told the same story. We had been studying the footprints in the Dolomites for some time, and it's amazing how clear cut the change from 'no dinosaurs' to 'all dinosaurs' was."

Comment: This is one prime example Bechly mentioned. Evolution runs in spirts, never slow and steady