Joined: Mar. 2005
In this Darwinian perspective, paleontology formulated its picture for the origin of new taxa. This picture, though rarely articulated, is familiar to all of us. We refer to it here as ?phyletic gradualism? and identify the following as its tenets:
(1) New species arise by the transformation of an ancestral population into its modified descendants.
(2) The transformation is even and slow.
(3) The transformation involves large numbers, usually the entire ancestral population.
(4) The transformation occurs over all or a large part of the ancestral species? geographic range.
Darwinian? If I recall correctly, Darwin suggested that evolution is apt to occur in a minority of a species, on the fringe of its territory. That stuff about it being the whole species at once was tacked on later by other scientists.
Afaik, only point 1 of those is part of the current theory as phrased above. Number 2 needs a qualifying phrase saying slow relative to the generational span of the species - i.e., that could still be fast relative to geologic eras.