seandhuine

Right at the end of all that, there's an IOU for a molecular explanation of puntuated equilibrium. How is the IOU cashed out? Oh, "transcription errors" plus some non-molecular magic. Transcription errors...think about that. Gradual errors (which are nearly always either neutral or deleterious -- in the real world, mind) that suddenly operate over a very short period to create a new species. Let me attempt to paraphrase the motivation for PE: "We can't see it happening because it's gradual, but it needs a catastrophe oh there it just happened!" Or it must have, because reasons. Errors, or something. Fairy dust.

I'm hoping that gradually over a very short period of time folks will realize the contradiction in terms that is called "punctuated equilibrium". It has no feasible molecular basis. Without such, it might as well be fairy dust for its explanatory power. But gradual fairy dust, that operates over very short periods of time.

The pertinent question remains: at the molecular level, how?

That a hypothesis that has no feasible molecular basis can be called "leading" is a mark of the bankruptcy of Darwinian evolutionary theory.

What Darwin knew about biology is incommensurate with a modern understanding of the word "mutation". A generation later than him, biologists still believed cells were formless blobs of jelly, so to speak. Punctuated equilibrium is even less defensible given our present understanding of the molecular basis of genetics.