tgamble

"Evolution at the level of populations and species might, in some cases, appear as nearly continuous change accompanied by divergence to occupy much of the available morphospace. However, this is certainly not true for long-term, large-scale evolution, such as that of the metazoan phyla, which include most of the taxa that formed the basis for the evolutionary synthesis.

The most striking features of large-scale evolution are the extremely rapid divergence of lineages near the time of their origin, followed by long periods in which basic body plans and ways of life are retained. What is missing are the many intermediate forms hypothesized by Darwin, and the continual divergence of major lineages into the morphospace between distinct adaptive types."

(Carroll, Robert L. [Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, Redpath Museum, McGill University, Canada ], "Towards a new evolutionary synthesis," Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 2000, Vol. 15, pp.27-32, p.27).

It sounds like Carroll is simply argueing for PE as apposed to gradualism. it's the last sentence that I'm unclear on. What does it mean?

theyeti

Here is the abstract of the article, as found on <a href="http://journals.bmn.com/journals/list/search?uid=TREE.etd00184_01695347_v0015i01_0000174 3&rendertype=abstract&node=TOC%40%40TREE%40017%400 1%40017_01" target="_blank">this page</a> (need free subscription). Unfortunately, my University recently canceled their subscription to BioMedNet, so I can't get the full text.

His views here are somewhat controversial, and I would personally take any definitive statements about "molecular developmental biology" with a grain of salt, as it's a very young field. The guy certainly isn't an anti-evolutionist. Assuming that some creationist threw that quote at you, it would seem to be another case of quote mining, in that the author seems to use a very narrow definition of "Darwinism", whereas the creationist wants to apply it very broadly.

Interestingly, a rebuttal to Carroll can be found in a later issue <a href="http://journals.bmn.com/journals/list/search?uid=TREE.etd00957_01695347_v0015i05_0000184 6&rendertype=abstract&node=TOC%40%40TREE%40017%400 1%40017_01" target="_blank">here</a>. Again I am plauged by lack of full text access ; what follows is the first paragraph, which is very tantalizing.

And you can find Carroll's response <a href="http://journals.bmn.com/journals/list/search?uid=TREE.etd00957_01695347_v0015i05_0000184 5&rendertype=abstract&node=TOC%40%40TREE%40017%400 1%40017_01" target="_blank">here</a>. Again, the first paragraph:
He really does seem to be putting most of his stock into molecular developmental biology, which is a rapidly moving field that seems to cause a lot of people a lot of confusion. I'm going to need to get the full text of these somehow; mabey then I can see if Carroll's making any sense. Mabey ps418 can comment on his fossil claims. My general feeling is that there's too much uncertainty in both fields to warrant any drastic reworking without a great deal of further evidence, though I would be interested in seeing what he proposes.

theyeti