I was reading Jerry Coyne's blog (http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/want-evolutionary-change-wait-a-million-years/) this morning and realized I had downloaded this (http://www.pnas.org/content/108/38/15908.abstract) paper when it was in the early edition and completely forgotten about it. I will spare you a detailed commentary on the paper as Jerry Coyne does a much better job than I would. In short, the paper looks at body size evolution for several vertebrate groups (mammals, squamates, and birds) using both fossil and modern datasets. They found that body size is bounded over time intervals shorter than 1 Ma. On time scales longer than 1 Ma, they found bursts of body size evolution.
This is evidence for punctuated equilibrium but the authors do not use this terminology in the paper. They also do not cite Eldredge and Gould. Am I wrong to expect them to? They do, however, cite Gould's book on The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. I suppose that will suffice.
Cool paper. I tend to agree with you, they could have mentioned punctuated equilibrium. I mean, 'blunderbuss pattern', c'mon, it's pretty much the same thing as what Eldredge and Gould proposed.
ReplyDeleteAgreed!
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