Punctuated equilibrium comes of age.
The intense controversies that surrounded the youth of punctuated equilibrium have helped it mature to a useful extension of evolutionary theory. As a complement to phyletic gradualism, its most important implications remain the recognition of stasis as a meaningful and predominant pattern within the history of species, and in the recasting of macroevolution as the differential success of certain species (and their descendants) within clades.
Gould
S J
SJ
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138.
Eldredge
N
N
D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D005580:Fossils; D008954:Models, Biological; D012641:Selection, Genetic